One of the many ways in which Uganda’s court management structures differs from ours is in its heavy use of Registrars – lawyers who aren’t yet judges (but who will be in the future) exercise a fair number of judicial functions. For example, the Criminal Court does most of its work in sessions – groups […]
One of my greatest regrets over the five years I’ve been coming to Uganda is that I haven’t visited the US Embassy in Kampala more often to keep them updated on what Pepperdine is doing in Uganda. During my first trip, in January of 2010, our group met with Ambassador Jerry Lanier shortly after we […]
I find myself in an increasingly familiar location as I write this long-overdue update on our team’s Ugandan prison project and plea bargaining conference – in the KLM Lounge in Amsterdam. Nineteen days have blown by, and I have only had the time to summarize the first eight days. Where I left off on Thursday, […]
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 […]
Anticipation hovers like a humid fog enveloping the brand new hotel complex in Mbale Monday morning as twelve Pepperdine students and ten American lawyers prepared to join their counterparts from Uganda Christian University and the Mbale legal bar to work arm in arm on behalf of prisoners “on remand” at the Mbale prison. While these […]
I have lived the past three days in the calm before our team’s storm of activity here in Uganda. But I haven’t been idle. I arrived late Tuesday night after a relatively uneventful 24-hour journey, LAX to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Entebbe. I have now made this journey seventeen times since 2010, but it doesn’t get […]
I will remember today for the rest of my life. When I am old and can’t remember my name or even recognize my children, I will still remember today. Seven years and one month ago, a 16 year-old Ugandan boy named Henry was arrested and charged with murder in conjunction with a mob killing of […]
There are no coincidences. That’s the theme running through one of my favorite movies of all time, and the reason the M. Night Shyamalan/Mel Gibson film “Signs” is so high on my list. I, too, look for God’s hand in events that others may chalk up to chance. When unexpected events converge in my life, […]
Last Friday morning, we bade farewell to the five Ugandan prison officials, none of whom had ever visited the United States before. They were effusive with gratitude and determined to incorporate as much of what they had learned as possible. The other five Ugandans and I (Luke returned home late Thursday night) began the day […]
Wednesday, our second day at Louisiana’s Angola State Prison, started off with breakfast with the larger-than-life Burl Cain – Angola’s charismatic and transformative warden. Thereafter, we visited the prison’s vocational training centers that are set up to help the prisoners acquire a skill while incarcerated. These include auto mechanics, auto collision repair, small engine repair […]
