Student Stories
The Criminal Prosecution Clinic, launched in 1996, is designed so students can examine the legal and social issues that matter to them while gaining practical experience at the Santa Clara County Superior Court. Only the clinics related to criminal prosecution and criminal defense regularly send students to trial court.
Four days a week during the full-time, quarter-long Criminal Prosecution Clinic, students head for San Jose, to either the courthouse or the district attorney’s office. Working directly with assistant prosecutors, students might spend one day examining witnesses and writing briefs and the next scrutinizing dashboard-camera footage and police reports to prepare to speak in court. Students work primarily on drunk-driving cases, residential and commercial burglaries, and assaults, some involving physical injuries.
Clinic students learn what cases prosecutors pursue and why as they develop their own philosophies of prosecution. Students also learn about prosecutorial discretion and observe the sometimes conflicting demands voters place on prosecutors. In some areas, for instance, residents may favor reduced policing while calling for strict law enforcement when they think crime is rising in their neighborhood.
The clinic “teaches students to think skeptically about criminal prosecution and policing, and their potential negatives, so they’re motivated to correct the problems that do exist,” says George Fisher, the clinic’s faculty co-director. For example, students frequently consider whether an arrest may have been motivated by the suspect’s race. Fisher adds that he encourages students “to think about the ethics of what they’re doing and the principles they must obey” as they form their views of prosecutorial discretion.
Here, we offer student and clinic alumni reflections about their work in the clinic (many from Stanford Lawyer magazine).
Amari Hammonds
JD ’17 Senior associate in the Supreme Court & Appellate Practice at Orrick
“I was interested in exploring ethical prosecution and the extent to which someone who cares about actual justice can do that,” says Hammonds, JD ’17. As a Black woman with family members who have been crime victims, Hammonds cares deeply about racial justice and victims’ experiences. “I came at it from both sides,” she says.
“My understanding of ways to be a government lawyer became more expansive than it was before,” says Hammonds, who followed her graduation with two judicial clerkships and a stint as an associate deputy solicitor general in California prior to joining a law firm.
Daniel A. Bojorquez
JD ’23 Antitrust and commercial litigation associate at Norton Rose Fulbright
Above all, students learn to advocate for what they believe is right. Daniel A. Bojorquez, JD ’23, a participant in the winter 2022 clinic, remembers a case in which he and his supervising attorney were prepared to oppose allowing a defendant in his early twenties—charged for the second time with distributing marijuana—to complete a counseling program instead of going to trial, a path known as diversion. Just before the hearing, however, Bojorquez learned that the defendant had earned his college degree and secured an engineering job during the two-year, pandemic-related lag between his arrest and trial.
That discovery convinced him to change his position because, he says, “I felt I really had to.”
“I didn’t want to be responsible for ruining someone’s life, especially after he’d worked so hard to rebuild it,” Bojorquez says, adding the judge ultimately granted diversion for the defendant.
Bojorquez, who plans to work for a law firm before pursuing a career as a federal or county prosecutor, appreciates having had the opportunity to serve in a prosecutorial setting. “You have real cases in your hands and people’s lives are depending on you,” he says. “It’s a serious commitment, but I think I’ll be a better attorney in the future because of it.”
Eric Smith
JD ’17, President, Force Protect Security Consultants
As a second-year student, Eric Smith, JD ’17, argued nearly 25 pretrial motions involving evidence suppression, speedy trials, and restitution, among other issues. He also conducted direct examinations of police of officers and presented dash-and body-cam footage as evidence in trials. All of this thanks to the quarter he spent working in Stanford’s Criminal Prosecution Clinic. It was, Smith says, “a unique and powerful experience.”
“It’s one thing to learn abstract legal ideas in a class, but it’s another to see how doctrines work in real life and what best practices look like,” Smith explains. “The clinic, more than any experience I’ve had, has given me that. I fully expect to use the courtroom experience I gained in the clinic.”
Michael A. Hestrin
JD/MA ’97, Riverside County’s District Attorney
Michael A. Hestrin remembers vividly his first day in court. It was 1996, and he was part of the first group of students to take the Criminal Prosecution Clinic. He was assigned an evidence hearing and spent hours researching—then the moment he’d been anticipating came. “I stood up and addressed the judge, and I just knew. It felt absolutely right. It was transformational for me,”
Hestrin had no idea that trial work would be his passion. “I had all sorts of other plans. I speak other languages—I thought perhaps I’d do international law,” he says. “Law school had been a process of finding out what I didn’t want to do. There were moments when I was discouraged, but then I found the clinic.”
“People sometimes ask me how I can send people to prison,” says Hestrin. “But I remind them that I also clear many people. Prosecutors keep people from going to prison all the time. It’s a very important part of our job.”
“I’ve done a lot of trials and cases, and I’ve been in situations where prosecutors will say we don’t have to give evidence now, or they’ll lean in a direction that I find questionable. And I’ll say—no—why hold something back? Share it as soon as you have it. I go back to George’s lessons all the time,” says Hestrin.
“George is such a gifted teacher,” says Hestrin. “He has made a lasting impact on so many of us. And while the clinic students don’t all go on to become prosecutors, those of us who do bring his lessons with us—we train new lawyers, we influence those we work with. So there is a multiplying effect.”
Truc T. Do
JD ’97, Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal
Watching Hestrin make his courtroom debut were George Fisher, Judge John Crown Professor of Law and faculty co-director of Stanford’s Criminal Prosecution Clinic, and the other five clinic students, including Truc T. Do ’97.
“Afterwards, we were all so happy that Mike won his motion,” says Do, who recently ended a 10-year career in the major crimes division of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office as one of the lead prosecutors on the Phil Spector retrial and is now of counsel with Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. “And I said, ‘Yeah, one for the team.’ But George said no, ‘Not one for the team, one for justice.’ I remembered George’s words when I became a prosecutor. It’s not about who wins. A guilty verdict is not something to pat yourself on your back about. It’s about seeking justice, not personal victories. I learned so much about how to practice law and what it means to be a lawyer from George. Every lesson in George’s class came with a message about how to be a responsible, ethical lawyer.”
David González
JD ’99, Partner at Sumpter & González
“We had some thorny issues with police evidence, which was met with a fairly hard line at the DA’s office,” says David González ’99, a partner at Sumpter & González LLP, the firm he co-founded with his wife, Corinne Sumpter ’99, right out of law school. “In the end, that too was a good lesson. We learned the difference between theory and the realities of a busy office with tons of cases where there isn’t a lot of time to have scholarly discussions. But one of the great benefits of the clinic is that we as students did have time for that discussion, and it was led by George. We were allowed to be part of that office and also part of an academic culture.”
“In defense, there is a freedom you have to zealously defend your client. It’s lonely being a prosecutor, a harder job,” adds González. “There are some things police do that you may not like, but what the defendant does may be worse. In defense, there’s only one thing—your client.”