Panelists:

Jennifer Gonnerman, writer, The New Yorker

Jennifer Gonnerman has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 2015. Her first piece for the magazine, “Before the Law,” documented the story of Kalief Browder, a teenager who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. The story was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. Jennifer has also written for the magazine about the Philadelphia district attorney’s struggle to remake his office; the efforts of a jailhouse lawyer in New York to free innocent people from prison; and the impact of corrupt police officers on the residents of a housing project in Chicago. Her first book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, chronicled the homecoming of a woman who spent sixteen years in prison for a first-time drug offense under the notorious Rockefeller drug laws. The book was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award and helped persuade New York legislators to rewrite the state’s drug laws.

Marilyn J. Mosby, Baltimore City State’s Attorney
Marilyn J. Mosby is the 25th State’s Attorney for Baltimore City. She was the youngest chief prosecutor of any major American city at the time of her election in 2015. A first-generation college graduate, State’s Attorney Mosby earned her Bachelor’s degree from Tuskegee University and her J.D. from Boston College Law School . State’s Attorney Mosby’s passion has always been to effectuate change by driving a more just, efficient, and fair criminal justice system. Her Conviction Integrity Unit has successfully exonerated nine wrongfully-incarcerated men since she took office. She is a member of the Association for Prosecuting Attorney’s (APA), and was an integral contributor to the APA’s reform proposals provided in the 21st Century Principles of Prosecution of Peace Officers.

Lauren Lipscomb, Head of Conviction Integrity Unit, Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office

Lauren Lipscomb is Chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit within the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office. Since March 2015, Lipscomb expanded the unit by creating the Conviction Integrity Program (“CIP”) which formalized the office’s review of claims of actual innocence. In this expansion, she developed a series of uniform protocols garnered from national models, acquired full time staff devoted to execution of the program, and directed the re-investigations into factual innocence claims. In 2016, she led the re-investigation in State v. Malcolm Bryant which resulted in the revamped unit’s first exoneration. In the years following, she directed the re-investigations leading to the exonerations of 12 more individuals who had been convicted of crimes that they did not commit. Notably her work was recently featured in the November 1, 2021, issue of the New Yorker magazine in an article entitled, “When a Witness Recants,” the article that this event is based on. Earlier this year, Lipscomb was appointed as a Deputy State’s Attorney within the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office. Within this role, she oversees the office’s most progressive units, including the Conviction Integrity Unit, Public Trust and Police Integrity Unit, Sentencing Review Unit, Evidence Review Unit, Investigations Unit, and Economic Crimes Unit. Lipscomb graduated from University of Baltimore Law School and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland at College Park.

Linda Starr, Exec Director, Northern CA Innocence Project

Linda Starr is the co-founder and Executive and Legal Director of the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) and clinical professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law, where she oversees all of NCIP’s advocacy efforts, including litigation and legislative efforts. She also teaches the NCIP clinical course. Under her leadership, NCIP has celebrated 33 victories and educated over 800 law students. Before co-founding NCIP in 2001, Starr had her own indigent post-conviction practice. She clerked for the California Court of Appeal and worked as an assistant district attorney in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office handling post-conviction matters and as a supervising attorney in the Sex Crimes and Special Victims Bureau. Starr received her J.D. from the University of Southern California Law Center.

Moderator:

Larry Marshall, Professor of Law, Stanford

Lawrence Marshall has been widely recognized for his lawyering, activism and teaching. Much of his scholarly and legal work has focused on issues surrounding legal ethics, appellate practice, criminal law, wrongful convictions and application of the death penalty. Marshall is a recognized expert in Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility, a field in which he has researched and taught for more than two decades. He has frequently served as an expert consultant and witness on an array of matters pertaining to lawyers’ responsibilities. He has an active pro bono practice through which he represents individuals in criminal appeals and post-conviction proceedings. He is a recipient of the American Bar Association’s prestigious Pro Bono Publico Award, as well as awards from many other organizations.

CONTACT EMAIL:
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