Virtual Training Event Description
Unlocking the Sentencing Guidelines, A Virtual Series: Session 18 -- Now What? Time to Get Proximate by Sharing Our Clients’ Stories
In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson repeated his grandmother’s admonition, “You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance. You have to get close.” Getting proximate is what he calls it. Getting proximate to the unfairly judged.
This webinar series on Unlocking the Sentencing Guidelines began with an overview of the guidelines, understanding the framework, where it is rigid and where it bends, to effectively advocate for the best possible outcomes for our clients.
In this final session of our series on Unlocking the Sentencing Guidelines, attendees will hear from former United States District Judge Nancy Gertner on our critical roles as advocates to get proximate, not to be constrained by the sentencing guidelines. In the years following her departure from the federal bench, Judge Gertner has spoken widely on the disproportionate punishment and cruel results that stem from a rigid sentencing guidelines system. This session will serve to inspire attendees to advocate at sentencing by telling our client’s mitigation stories of trauma, addiction, mental illness, and the overly harsh impact of incarceration upon families and communities when a lesser sentence or alternatives to incarceration would serve as a just and reasonable sentence.
Presenter(s)
Judge Nancy Gertner is a graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School where she was an editor on The Yale Law Journal. She received her M.A. in Political Science at Yale University. She has been an instructor at Yale Law School, teaching sentencing and comparative sentencing institutions, since 1998.
She was appointed to the bench in 1994 by President Clinton. In 2008 she received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, only the second woman to receive it (Justice Ginsburg was the first). She became a Leadership Council Member of the International Center for Research on Women the same year. In 2010 she received the Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award. In 2011 she received the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Hennessey award for judicial excellence, and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brandeis University. In 2012 she received the Arabella Babb Mansfield award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the Leila J. Robinson Award of the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts. She has been selected to receive the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement from the American Bar Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession in August 2014. She has been profiled on a number of occasions in the Boston Globe, the ABA Journal, Boston Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. She has written and spoken widely on various legal issues and has appeared as a keynote speaker, panelist or lecturer concerning civil rights, civil liberties, employment, criminal justice and procedural issues, throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Her autobiography, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, was released on April 26, 2011. Her book, The Law of Juries, co-authored with attorney Judith Mizner, was published in 1997 and updated in 2010. She has published articles, and chapters on sentencing, discrimination, and forensic evidence, women’s rights, and the jury system.
In September of 2011, Judge Gertner retired from the federal bench and became part of the faculty of the Harvard Law School teaching a number of subjects including criminal law, criminal procedure, forensic science and sentencing, as well as continuing to teach and write about women’s issues around the world.
CLE Applicable Event
VIRTUAL PROGRAM:
This is a virtual program. Defender Services Office Training Division, (DSOTD), generally seeks CLE accreditation for participants and faculty attending virtual programs. CLE for this program will be sought in all applicable jurisdictions. However, actual CLE approval is at the discretion of each bar association/organization. Notably, you must attend the entire virtual program to receive full CLE credit. To minimize reporting fees per attorney/program, if you are barred in more than one of the following states: NM, TN, PA, NE, attendance will be reported to one state only. Attorneys are responsible for making sure the appropriate state and bar number is on file with DSOTD. For states that require DSOTD to report attendance, attendance will be reported using the bar number(s) and state(s) listed on the registration form submitted for this virtual program. Failure to provide a state and bar number may result in DSOTD not being able to report your attendance. Within 30 days of the completion of this virtual program, DSOTD staff will send attendees a post program email with a CLE information sheet detailing the amount of CLE credit approved by each state, a uniform certificate of attendance and a program agenda. If you have further CLE questions about this program, please contact the DSOTD contact listed above. For general CLE questions, visit our CLE information center or email DSO_CLEAdmin@ao.uscourts.gov.
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