Giving Birth

The idea of adopting a system of plea bargaining in order to expedite the criminal justice process for those arrested and detained in Uganda was conceived seven years ago during the summer internship of two Pepperdine law students – Greer Illingworth and Micheline Zamora.  The birthing process has been slow, but steady, during the gestation period.  We assisted with the rollout in the juvenile realm in recent years, and with several pilot programs in the adult realm.

This week, it truly feels like the delivery is nearly complete as our team of two dozen lawyers (mostly Pepperdine alums) and Pepperdine law students work hand in hand with Ugandan law students and lawyers to bring access to justice for about 150 Ugandan prisoners.

We started out on Monday in Mbale, a rural city in Eastern Uganda near the border with Kenya.  After a small ceremony at the Mbale High Court presided over by the two High Court judges resident in Mbale, we drove out to the prison to meet the thirty prisoners who indicated a desire to negotiate a plea deal in exchange for a guilty plea.  We assembled into our seven pre-assigned teams, each consisting of at least one American lawyer, one Pepperdine law student, and one Uganda Christian University law student, and waited for the Ugandan lawyers to arrive.

And waited.

The Ugandans are wonderfully friendly and welcoming people, but they are not burdened by the virtue of promptness.  About an hour later, one arrived.  And then another.  Fully two hours after we were supposed to begin, each group finally had a lawyer.  Over the course of about 60-90 minutes each, the team interviewed the prisoners, explained to them the concept of plea bargaining, and discussed whether the prisoner was interested in accepting the prosecutor’s offers that had been communicated that morning.

Over the next six hours, the team got through their thirty cases.  My role was to direct traffic, answer questions, and liaise with our Ugandan judiciary counterparts, chief among them is Andrew Khaukha, without whom this bus wouldn’t be rolling forward.  By the end of the day, another twenty or so prisoners had come forward wanting to engage in plea negotiations.  That night, the students and lawyers worked quite late into the evening summarizing their interviews.

Allison Brown — junior at Abilene Christian University, daughter of team member Alan Brown, and overall project MVP — helped Jenna Anderson (works with me at Pepperdine) manage the case files (both physical and digital), and captured in pictures much of what we were doing.

Alan Brown and his team

Emily Smith and her team

Melissa Mertens with a prison guard

OU Professor Michael Scaperlanda and his team

Huddling up with Alan Jackson

Directing Traffic

On Tuesday, we engaged in the same process at the Tororo prison, which is about one hour outside of Mbale.  The Ugandan lawyers weren’t quite as late, but only three of the promised seven showed up.  This meant that we needed to proceed with the case preparations in their absence and then connect the clients with their lawyers after the interviews were completed.  Once again, numerous other prisoners joined in the process as the day progressed.  For the first time in our series of pilot programs over the years, we actually executed plea agreements on the spot in the prison.  This marked a huge step forward in the Ugandans’ embracing of plea bargaining practice, in addition to theory.  This was followed by another late night of case preparation.

Wednesday morning had us back in the Mbale prison because there were so many new additions to the project.  Fully 75% of the 450 inmates at the Mbale prison are “on remand,” which means they are incarcerated while they wait for a court date to be scheduled, which is the trigger for an assignment of a lawyer.  Some wait five years or more for this to happen.  They are tired of waiting.

In the afternoon, we returned to the Ugandan High Court trial courtroom for a training program for the Ugandan judges and lawyers.  This consisted of a re-enactment of the plea bargaining process from start to finish.  LA Public Defender, Melissa Mertens, played the role of narrator and court clerk.  Tennessee prosecutor, Emily Smith, played the role of prosecutor.  Former LA district attorney/now private defense lawyer, Alan Jackson, played the role of defense lawyer.  Midland, Texas-based oil and gas lawyer, Alan Brown, played the role of a criminal defendant who had been charged with murder.  And yours truly played the role of judge.

The re-enactment started in the prison as the two Alans discussed the case, including the prosecutor’s offer.  It then moved into the prosecutor’s offer where an agreement was reached.  From there we moved into the judge’s chambers for an informal discussion, finally finishing by taking the plea on the record in open court.  This was followed by an extensive Q and A.  The feedback we received was quite favorable.

After this role-playing re-enactment, we spent a heartbreaking hour visiting the Mbale juvenile remand home.  I had worked in four remand homes in the past, including this one, but most others hadn’t experienced the desperate conditions endured by juvenile prisoners.  While this was mostly a social visit, we were able to assure them that their cases would be added to the next court session a few weeks from now.  As we left, we pitched in enough money to allow the staff to provide them with a big feast the following day, breaking the drudgery of corn meal and beans that they have every day.

Mbale Remand Home

Thursday morning, we left Mbale at 6:30 a.m. to travel farther north to Soroti, where we spent the day at the Soroti prison doing the same thing as the prior days.  Fortunately, word is traveling well, so we had nine Ugandan lawyers meet us at the prison, and most arrived within an hour of the scheduled start time.  We also conducted another simulated plea bargaining session at the High Court building in the afternoon, and all twenty-five of the lawyers in town attended and engaged in an exceptionally encouraging question and answer session after we finished.

From the High Court, we headed back to the prison to finalize some tasks and to take a group photo.  As we were leaving and about to board our bus, two prisoners assisted a cow in giving birth – right there in front of us – to a baby calf.

The symbolism was lost on no one.

As I write this at 11:00 p.m., half of the team is hard at work finishing their case summaries from today and preparing for our visit to the Lira prison, even farther north.