GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER, D.C. CRIMINAL JUSTICE CLINIC
Emily Gladden

A psychology major from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, Emily Gladden was nominated for a Truman Fellowship Scholar Athlete Award from the Women’s Intercollegiate Squash Association, and she founded Students against the Death Penalty on her campus. Emily was a teacher’s assistant in law and psychology, and she worked in the past as a mental-health intern at Greylock Elementary School. This National Merit Commended Scholar studied abroad at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and she was honored as a Seman’s Family Merit Scholar (for exceptional citizenship). Emily won the Harvard Club of Boston Book Prize, and she was a finalist in a public-speaking contest as well as an intern at Centurion Ministries (to free people who were wrongly imprisoned). Emily was a volunteer for an environmentally-oriented peace program in Estonia. She belonged to Habitat for Humanity and Best Buddies. (The latter does work with the mentally handicapped.) Emily was a WOOLF leader, who conducted wilderness trips for college freshmen, and she played varsity squash and lacrosse. A high-honors student, Emily gave tennis lessons to children in the Special Olympics. Emily applied to the Washington Internship Program near the end of March after missing the deadline for summer internships at the Public Defender Service, but WIP was able to place her at the Criminal Justice Clinic run by Georgetown University Law School (even though that deadline had also passed). In addition, Emily was accepted at the State’s Attorney’s Office (where she missed the application deadline) and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which was given to another WIP intern after Emily chose her favorite from among the three offers she received. Emily lived at International House, which is run by the Washington Internship Program, from early June to mid August. She found a part-time paid job working two evenings a week with disadvantaged youngsters in an environmental context.       

                Located on the campus of Georgetown University Law School, the Criminal Justice Clinic accepts only eight interns each summer who work closely with first and second-year law students as well as law professors at Georgetown. After an intensive week-long training period, Emily began photographing and diagramming crime scenes; helping to develop defense strategies; meeting with clients in prison and their families at home; deposing witnesses; visiting police stations to obtain reports; and going to court in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia to get case jackets and previous criminal records. Emily worked on fifteen to twenty cases involving assault with a deadly weapon, hate crimes, armed car-jacking, possession of illegal drugs, arson, domestic violence, and distribution of cocaine, among other felonies. She took statements and wrote twenty-page reports in three cases, and she interviewed and wrote memos for three or four prosecution witnesses (some of whom refused to cooperate because they were victims of the crime). During the time that Emily was in Washington, her office won two cases – one for a juvenile found innocent of possessing marijuana, and the other for a man accused of attaching a family member. Emily also did considerable work on a case in which a bystander with a gun was accused of threatening a gay person. Emily liked the supportive community that developed among the defense team, and she realized how much difference interns make working frequently with poor, uneducated defendants who may be “at the mercy of the justice system because they have little money or resources.”

                Emily was honest about “seeing the under-side of the legal system” where decisions are often influenced by “racism,” “luck,” “closed-minded judges,” and “attorneys who encourage the accused to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit when funds to pay for an adequate defense are unavailable.” Emily observed ignorance and indifference among prison guards and police, but she was gratified to work as an investigator who was greatly appreciated for giving a chance to people who might otherwise be injured by a system where they couldn’t afford a fair trial or were given bad advice they could not adequately evaluate. The Georgetown interns were taken to visit the D.C. Public Defender Service, which is a much larger defense program, and a barbecue for interns and lawyers was held near the end of the summer at the home of the intern coordinator.               

JUVENILE JUSTICE CLINIC

On Mondays and Wednesdays in the late afternoons and evenings from 4:30 to 8:00, Emily Gladden worked for $8 an hour with an after-school program for youngsters run by Georgetown University’s Juvenile Justice Clinic. The purpose of this project was to sensitize adolescents to environmental issues, like cleaning up the Anacostia River. With the assistance of young people from thirteen to eighteen years of age, Emily helped inform the community that trash thrown in storm drains ends up in the river, and she worked with the children against companies that are polluting the city by dumping waste products directly into the river. Emily taught teens to make PowerPoint presentations and otherwise raise consciousness about the value of clean water. She was able to apply her major in psychology as well as her conservation training to this paid position. After reviewing both her internship and this summer job in Washington, D.C., Emily is considering the pursuit of a doctoral degree in psychology, rather than continuing in law, to help young people earlier in life before they become embroiled in the criminal-justice system.

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