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Maneka Sinha, professor of law at Maryland Carey Law who co-teaches the forensic defense clinic, said many lawyers are hesitant to confront issues relating to scientific or technology topics, such as forensic evidence. (Maryland Carey Law/Submitted photo)
The University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law has launched a first-in-the-nation forensic defense clinic designed to assist in representing indigent accused or convicted persons through focusing on issues related to forensic evidence.
The six-credit clinic launched earlier this semester and is divided into two parts, with a practicum component and a seminar, which offers students an intensive survey of forensic evidence and explores legal principles governing and regulating the use of forensic evidence in criminal cases, with a focus on admissibility.
Maneka Sinha, a professor of law at Maryland Carey Law who co-teaches the forensic defense clinic, said many lawyers are hesitant to confront issues relating to scientific or technology topics, such as forensic evidence.
“We can’t really operate like that anymore,” Sinha said in an interview Monday. “We’re training students to go out into the world, and they’re going to have forensic issues in their cases.”
Though the clinic this semester is focusing on some of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender’s post-conviction firearms cases, Sinha said the clinic will take on different sets of cases based on need. In the future, the clinic could draft amicus briefs and write papers or reports, Sinha said.
Molly Ryan, an adjunct professor at Maryland Carey Law who also co-teaches the forensic defense clinic, said having attorneys who specifically focus on forensics, like the Maryland Office of the Public Defender’s forensics division, gave the law school and professors the expertise to contemplate starting the clinic.
“I think that was very helpful in terms of both of us having the experience that we needed to start doing this,” Ryan said of her and Sinha’s public defender backgrounds.
Sinha and Ryan mentioned a number of goals for the clinic and what they hope students can take away from the experience.
“The goal is for clinic to be nimble and responsive to issues that are current and topical,” Sinha said. “The forensic world is always changing, and so we want to be able to operate in a way that is responsive to that.”
For Ryan, one goal of the clinic is ensuring students understand the role of public defenders, as well as for the clinic itself to focus on client-centered advocacy.
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Sinha also said she hopes the clinic can take away students’ fear of working with forensic evidence.
“I want students to go out into the world knowing that you can tackle this stuff,” Sinha said. “You don’t have to have been a scientist; you don’t have to have a science or technology degree to be able to litigate cases that involve this type of evidence.”
Also top of mind for forensic defense clinic students, Sinha hopes, is the weight of forensic evidence. Sinha said forensic evidence carries with it an air of neutrality and objectiveness, but she said even this has the ability to enable and perpetuate criminal legal harms that are disproportionately directed at minoritized and marginalized populations.
“It’s really important for us to bring that connection to students because I don’t know that forensic evidence and its role and its impact is taught that way in every law school and may not always be understood that way by litigators who have to focus on the cases and issues in front of them,” Sinha said.
The clinic is affiliated with Maryland Carey Law’s Gibson-Banks Center for Race and the Law, which launched last year.
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Publish date : 2024-09-23 08:56:00
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