By Blake Eaton
This is only my second semester at UT Dallas, and already I’ve had
the pleasure of taking part in the Innocence Project Workshop. While my time in
the class is far from over, I am already thrilled with how much I have learned.
The premise of the class is simple. Students review case
materials that have been sent to the Innocence Project by people who claim to
have been wrongly convicted in order to determine whether the cases have merit.
They then present their findings to the rest of the class and create a brief
memo to be sent to the Innocence Project with recommendations regarding the
cases.
The concept alone is impressive, to say the least. The
class, run by Dr. Champagne, is at the same time labor-intensive and
low-stress. We review a new case in class every week, but the fact that we are
split into four groups means that each group has almost a
full month to read through their materials first.
Every moment of excitement in the legal arena is surrounded
with tedium, though, and this is reflected in the case files that we read.
After reading upwards of 1,000 pages, I typically have a solid understanding of
events, but those pages don’t pass by in a blur, and even the shortest cases
take dozens of hours to read through. It’s fortunate that I entered the class
with a healthy interest in the law.
I’m not unique in that respect, and that is a huge part of
why the course is so memorable. Everyone in the class is engaged, excited to be
there, and prepared for class every Thursday. This is hardly unique from my
experience at UT Dallas, but it makes the already interesting material that much
better. Disagreements are frequent, and the debates we have about individuals’
guilt or innocence are consistently challenging.
It’s really exactly what I signed up for, and I couldn’t be
happier.
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