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EQUAL JUSTICE WORKS SYMPOSIUM TO FOCUSON WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Equal Justice Works, a
legal organization at the University of Arkansas School of Law, will present
"Innocence Lost: A Symposium on Wrongful Convictions" at 12:30 p.m.,
Tuesday March 9, in the school's courtroom.
Court
TV host and commentator James Curtis, Philadelphia
attorney J. Gordon Cooney and Paragould, Ark., attorney Dan Stidham, a 1987 alumnus of the School of Law, will serve as panelists for the
event, which will delve into a variety of cases involving wrongful convictions.
Cooney
and another partner were able to get a man off of death row and out of prison
in 2003 because of DNA testing after 15 years of incarceration from a 1985
conviction. Cooney is an adjunct lecturer in law at Villanova
University Law
School and is in litigation practice
at Morgan Lewis in Philadelphia.
Stidham
was elected to the position of District Court Judge of Greene County
in 2000. He was appointed to represent a member of the "West Memphis
Three" defendants who were accused of killing three 8-year-old boys in
1993 in what police maintain was a satanic ritual. Stidham is the only original
attorney still working the case, and for the last 10 years has been actively
investigating the murder case pro bono as it moves through the appeals stage.
Equal
Justice Works is a student-run organization whose purpose is to promote
knowledge and interest in public interest law, to encourage students to
participate in public interest internships, to broaden the scope of their legal
education, to foster outside educational experiences through such internships
and judicial clerkships and to aid in a financial manner those students who
might not ordinarily be able to afford voluntary and lower paid outside
employment opportunities in the legal community,
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