Roosevelt University's Joseph Loundy Human Rights Project and Department of Psychology present the Second Annual Wrongful Conviction Distinguished Speaker Series

We are honored to welcome Joey Mogul, JD, Partner,  People’s Law Office, and Darrell Cannon, Police Torture Survivor and Activist.

Wed, Oct. 3, 4:00- 5:30pm, Gage Gallery of Roosevelt University, 18 S Michigan Avenue, Chicago

Darrell Cannon’s false confession after torture by police in 1983 led to his conviction for murder and a life sentence. He won a reversal of the conviction, but he was again convicted at a second trial. On appeal, Cannon’s lawyers informed the court of 28 newly discovered cases of torture and abuse by the same Burge henchmen who had tortured Cannon, and the Court issued a landmark decision granting Cannon a new hearing at which he could use this evidence to show that his confession was tortured from him. The case was again returned to the trial court, and, after a protracted evidentiary hearing that focused on the pattern and practice of police torture, the State of Illinois dismissed Cannon’s case in 2004. After another lengthy legal battle, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board finally rescinded a parole hold that was premised on the dismissed murder conviction and Cannon was released from prison in 2007 – – 24 years after he was wrongfully convicted.

Joey L. Mogul is a partner at the People’s Law Office in Chicago, Illinois and Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at DePaul University College of Law. Mogul’s practice focuses on representing individuals who have suffered from police and other governmental misconduct in civil rights cases, and defending individuals in criminal and capital cases. Mogul has worked to seek justice for Chicago Police torture survivors for the last fourteen years, which included presenting the cases to UN Committee Against Torture and the Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland in 2006. Mogul’s practice has also included representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in criminal and civil proceedings involving police and prisoner torture, abuse and misconduct. Mogul previously published The Dykier, the Butcher, the Better: the State’s Use of Homophobia and Sexism to Execute Women in the United States in the New York City Law Review and with co-author Ritchie, In the Shadows of the War on Terror: Persistent Police Brutality and Abuse of People of Color in the United States in the DePaul Journal for Social Justice. Mogul has spoken widely before both legal and popular audiences on the state’s use of homophobic, sexist and racist arguments in criminal cases and has devised legal training to counter such efforts. Mogul has also worked as an activist with Queer to the Left in Chicago, Illinois, the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights and with others to challenge the death penalty, torture by law enforcement officials, gentrification and supermax conditions. Mogul is an Oberlin College graduate and earned a juris doctorate from City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law.

Free and open to the public.  Brief reception follows, and copies of Mogul’s most recent book, Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, will be available for purchase.
The series is cosponsored by the Justice Council of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s School of Law.
For more information, contact Professor Bethany Barratt at bbarratt@roosevelt.edu or Professor Shari Berkowitz at sberkowitz@roosevelt.edu

Future Speakers and Dates:
October 24, 2012: Joshua A. Tepfer, J.D. & Terrill Swift
4-5:30pm in the Gage Gallery
TALK TITLE: Convenient Scapegoats: The Englewood Four and Juvenile Confessions
Josh Tepfer is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Northwestern University School of Law. As project coordinator and staff attorney for the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, he has been instrumental in helping to secure the freedom of wrongfully convicted individuals, including members of the Dixmoor Five and the Englewood Four.
Terrill Swift is one of five Englewood teenagers wrongfully convicted of rape and murder. Despite pretrial DNA testing that excluded all five, four of them were convicted until the Center on Wrongful Convictions linked DNA recovered from the victim to Johnny Douglas. Mr. Swift was released from prison in 2012 after serving more than 15 years.
November 1, 2012: Geoffrey R. Loftus, Ph.D.
4-5:30pm in the Gage Gallery
TALK TITLE: Why should juries be told about human perception and memory?
Dr. Loftus is a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, and is well-regarded as a leading expert in human memory and perception. As such, Dr. Loftus has been permitted to testify as an expert witness on perception, memory, statistics, and video-game behavior in approximately 320 civil and criminal cases. Dr. Loftus routinely lectures all around the world on his research, and is known both nationally and internationally for his work. He is also the recipient of several grants and has received grants from both the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. He is the author of seven books and approximately 100 scientific articles, and has published in prestigious journals including, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review and Law & Human Behavior. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, his B.A. from Brown University, and completed a post-doc at New York University.
November 14, 2012: Richard A. Leo, Ph.D./JD
4-5:30pm in the Gage Gallery
TALK TITLE: False Confessions: Causes, Consequences, Solutions.
Richard A. Leo, PhD, JD, joined the law faculty of the University of San Francisco in 2006, after a decade as a tenured professor of psychology and criminology at UC Irvine and prior to that as a professor of sociology and adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado, Boulder for three years. Dr. Leo is nationally and internationally known for his pioneering empirical research on police interrogation practices, the impact of Miranda, psychological coercion, false confessions, and wrongful convictions. Dr. Leo has authored more than 80 articles in leading scientific and legal journals as well as several books. According to the University of Chicago Leiter rankings, Dr. Leo is one of the most cited criminal law and procedure professors in the United States. He is regularly invited to lecture and present training sessions to lawyers, judges, police, forensic psychologists, and other criminal justice professionals. Dr. Leo is also often called to advise and assist practicing attorneys and has served as a litigation consultant and/or expert witness in hundreds of criminal and civil cases. Dr. Leo has worked on many high profile cases involving false confessions, including the cases of Michael Crowe, Earl Washington, Kerry Max Cook, Medell Banks, Angela Swartout, the Beatrice Six, and two of the Central Park jogger defendants. The work Dr. Leo did to help free four innocent prisoners in Virginia (known as the “Norfolk 4”) was the subject of a story in The New Yorker magazine in 2009 and a PBS Frontline documentary in 2010. Dr. Leo received his AB at UC Berkeley, his MA at the University of Chicago, and his PhD and JD at UC Berkeley.