SCHOOL OF LAW NEWS
CRIMINAL AND JUVENILE DEFENSE CLINIC WINS AT MINNESOTA SUPREME COURT
Student practitioners in the Criminal and Juvenile Defense Clinic won a victory for their client in a case that made it all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court. In August 2023, the Court ruled 7-0 to grant a resentencing hearing for an individual who was initially sentenced as a child to life in prison without the possibility of parole. “The win, coupled with recent legislative changes in Minnesota, means that the client will have a hearing before the Supervised Release Board sometime within the next five years, which is much more hopeful than the life without parole sentence he originally faced,” said clinic instructor Associate Professor Rachel Moran. The clinic has been working on the case since 2018, when it first opened at St. Thomas Law. Many student attorneys, several now alumni, worked on the case in that time, however Moran highlighted Sarah Koziol ’21 J.D. , Ka Bao Jennrich ’22 J.D. , Ashley Fischer ’22 J.D. and Kim Meyer ’23 J.D. in particular for their work to draft compelling petitions and briefs and make winning arguments to the court. “Not many law students get their names on the front cover of a winning state supreme court decision, but these four certainly deserve it,” Moran said. “The biggest congratulations, of course, go to our client, but when I shared the good news with him he told me to make sure I thanked all the students who invested so much effort into his success.”
#2 FOR PRACTICAL TRAINING St. Thomas Law has been ranked among the top three law schools in this category since 2014.
The National Jurist , 2024
Spring 2024 Page 7
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