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All Things Considered

December 15, 2004

Interview: Brendan Hurson, Julie Reddick, Elizabeth Carmichael and Brian Furlong discuss their work on the Arvinger case and what they hope to do once they finish law school

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ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

And we continue now with the case of Walter Arvinger, the Baltimore man who served 36 years of a life sentence for a brutal killing, a crime that he did not commit.

The other day, four University of Maryland law students talked with us about how they set out to learn the law and found themselves serving the cause of justice. For 18 months, they worked to win clemency for Walter Arvinger. In clinical practice and in a legal writing course, they put Walter Arvinger's case to the governor of Maryland. Brian Furlong, Elizabeth Carmichael, Julie Reddick(ph) and Brendan Hurson are all third-year law students who are about to enter a profession whose capacity for error is now manifest to them. In a classroom at the law school, they discussed the lessons they learned from the Arvinger case, beginning with Brendan Hurson.

Mr. BRENDAN HURSON (! Law Student, University of Maryland): It's just the awesome responsibility of attorneys, of prosecutors and defense attorneys, particularly those defending indigent clients. You are this client's only hope, and if it's not getting taken care of at the trial level, you have dug such a deep hole that it can take, you know, 36 years out to climb out of it.

SIEGEL: Elizabeth.

Ms. ELIZABETH CARMICHAEL (Law Student, University of Maryland): I think a lot of the importance is to learn not to be jaded. And, you know, we've all gone through what's called the jail mail. And, you know, everybody looks and you go through and so often out on the street, even talking to older lawyers or, you know, lawyers who've been practicing for a while, it is a similar phrase: `Well, they all say they're innocent,' or, you know, `Everybody's got a story.' But you know, maybe most of the people do, but then there's the Walter Arvingers.

SIEGEL: Brian.

Mr. BRIAN FURL! ONG (Law Student, University of Maryland): And if you just pile up al l the stacks of letters that law professors and lawyers get all over the country that have already managed to, you know, exonerate people, it's quite a large pile.

SIEGEL: Given that we are capable of error and making mistakes with colossal consequences for people, how do you think you're going to be able to at least minimize, if not completely prevent, mistakes of the magnitude of this one? What do you think, Julie?

(Soundbite of chuckling)

SIEGEL: What do you do? How do you do that?

Ms. JULIE REDDICK (Law Student, University of Maryland): Well, I guess the first thing would just be, obviously, this case has given all of us the opportunity to see the wide variety of errors that can exist and just being exposed to all of these different experiences. And knowing all the things that could go wrong just definitely opens your eyes up to being aware of the mistakes that can possibly be made.

Mr. HURSON: I mean, I struggle with it a lot bec! ause I want to be a public defender. That's what I want to do, and I know what that means. I know that. And, of course, Mr. Arvinger's case, I hate to say it's an easy one, but here's an innocent man charged with murder. That's going to get your attention. What maybe isn't, and where I've wrestled with the error, is in a small-time drug possession, where you're looking at 30 days or what have you. I know I'm going to have a stack of a hundred files and, frankly, I don't know how a public defender can deal with it. And I think that's why you see a lot of burnout, you see a lot of shifting careers.

And so I mean, I would continue to do everything I can. And I think the one thing I've learned is listening and just taking the time to make eye contact with your client and just listen to what they have to say. Don't go into a case thinking that this is just an easy run-of-the-mill `I can win this one,' but actually listen to not just the important information, what ha! ppened, but what their family's like, where they're from, what they've been through. And at best if you can listen, if you can turn them into a human being for even just a split second, not just another file, I think there's hope.

SIEGEL: Elizabeth.

Ms. CARMICHAEL: For me, it underscores the need to--I mean, it might sound a little hokey, but to do everything that you possibly can to help someone. And if you have the opportunity to take a shortcut and kind of breeze through something--I mean, that's just--your role as someone's lawyer is to not take the shortcut. I mean, yet--these are people's lives.

SIEGEL: On the other hand, what a radio listener wouldn't be able to see right now is you're in your eighth month of pregnancy with...

Ms. CARMICHAEL: Ninth month, actually.

SIEGEL: Ninth month.

Ms. CARMICHAEL: I'm due in a week and a half.

SIEGEL: ...with your third child.

Ms. CARMICHAEL: Yes.

SIEGEL: And so someday, you're going to be a lawyer with three kids at home...

Ms. CARMICHAEL: Yes.

SIEGEL: ...and the choice of whether you put in the other three or four hours into the case of the next Mr. Arvinger. Are you going to have that time, really, to do it?

Ms. CARMICHAEL: Well, I can tell you how I did with the case of this Mr. Arvinger is, you know, leave work or school or your office when you need to and you go home and you take people that need to go to soccer practice to soccer practice and you give everybody dinner and a bath and a story and you kiss them on the head and you stick them in bed. And then you whip out your laptop and instead of turning on the television, you sit and you begin to do your work.

SIEGEL: Brian, what do you say?

Mr. FURLONG: Well, that's our jobs as attorneys. It's not about how much we're getting paid or how many hours we think we have; it's about the fact that we are someone's representative and we are their only voice.

SIEGEL: On the other hand, how many c! hildren do you have at home right now?

Mr. FURLONG: I don't ha ve any children.

SIEGEL: So now let's flash forward to when you have three children at home. Are you still going to be able to say, `I'm going to work in a situation where the return on representing people is not what determines how many hours I can put into a given case'?

Mr. FURLONG: Well, I think that there's so many jobs for attorneys out there that not every job is representing an individual person. And when you are in a life circumstance where you can't do that to the best of your ability, then that cannot be your chosen profession anymore. You have to move on to a different field of law.

I want to be a prosecutor, and I think it's as much of a concern for someone who wants to be a prosecutor as someone who wants to be a defense attorney in making sure that justice prevails and tragedies like this don't happen.

SIEGEL: Can you imagine being a prosecutor and there being a crime for which no one yet has been convicted, and you have a tenu! ous case against yet another defendant in it, but you could bring home a conviction and say, `Something has been done--something is being done by this office I work for to right the wrong committed that night'?

Mr. FURLONG: I think the prosecutors' offices, while they are pushed by public opinion and to correct injustices and to help victims, they have to put that beside them and make sure that they've, you know, followed justice and justice prevails as opposed to just victims being satisfied that someone has been brought to justice--or what they feel has been brought to justice.

SIEGEL: And, Julie, do you know what you want to do?

Ms. REDDICK: Coming out of law school these days, it's very difficult not to be carrying an enormous debt load. So even though I see a lot of merit in public work, and hope to get there someday, I have to pay off some bills first. So...

SIEGEL: Elizabeth.

Ms. CARMICHAEL: Ideally, I would like to do crimina! l defense work. I'd like to open up my own practice. However...
(Soundbite of laughter)


Ms. CARMICHAEL: ...at this point, I'm trying to figure out how to balance a career wherein I can support my family and pay off my law school loans and, at the time, do as much good as I possibly can do. So I think for the first few years, I'm going to do some work maybe in insurance defense or construction law or areas like that and hope that I can do some pro bono on the side, and eventually get myself financially in the position to where I can go out on my own.

And if--goodness forbid--I never, ever do another really good thing in my legal career and, you know, if I have to just keep slogging away to put the kids through college, I will have had this and then I will have been able to know that I was a part of--a small cog in the machine that helped Mr. Arvinger get his life back.

SIEGEL: That's Elizabeth Carmichael. She and Julie Reddick, Brian Furlong and Brendan Hurson worked on the case of Walter Arvinger, who was rele! ased from a Maryland prison last month after spending 36 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

We'd like to thank WMAR Baltimore, WJZ-TV and WBAL-TV, who provided local news footage. And if you'd like to see photos of Walter Arvinger and of the students, you can to our Web site, npr.org.

(Soundbite of music)

SIEGEL: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

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Record Number: 200412152007