Resumed Innocence

One of the public interest extracurriculars available to join at Duke is the Innocence Project, the organization of students, teachers and legal advisers that work to overturn wrongful convictions. When I mentioned this to Brandon he said something along the lines of, "Oh, that's great. So you're going to work on that, right?" Right. How could I not. It is right up my bleeding-heart alley. I do believe there are people in our prison system who have been wrongly convicted of crimes the didn't commit. I don't think there are enough people out there fighting for justice in their cases.

Today I went to the first informational meeting about working on the Innocence Project. They have been careful to tailor categories of work so that each student can offer as much or as little of a commitment as she feels she can handle. I'm definitely in. (Now, don't worry, this will build on and enhance my law school experience, not take time away from it.)

This morning, due to some very long term work of Duke Law students and some dedicated (Duke alumni) council Dwayne Allen Dail has been given back his freedom. Eighteen years ago he was falsely convicted of raping a twelve year old girl. Last week the evidence from the trial, which had been "lost" for eighteen years, showed up when an officer retired. One account in the news says that the box was mistakenly stashed away in a corner of his office. Another article says that a pair of officers found it while cleaning out a storage room. Completely unconfirmed accounts said something about a motorcycle shed at the officer's home. Regardless of why the evidence was missing for 18 years, it contained DNA evidence that conclusively cleared Dail.

Foodie Tendencies

I had all of these tiny pear-shaped yellow tomatoes that I bought last week at the farmers market. They were about to start getting a little mushy, so I thought I should have them for lunch today. I decided to chop them up in a bowl with some mozzarella and throw in some salmon I had left over from dinner last night. After chopping the tomatoes, adding the mozzarella and a little pesto, I remembered listening to The Splendid Table one day when Lynne Rossetto Kasper was talking about stale bread. She suggested chopping it up and throwing it in with some tomatoes and mozzarella for a yummy summer salad. I chopped up the heel end of some sun dried tomato basil bread and threw in. It's a dense bread, so it didn't get too soggy. It just soaked up all that tomato juice. It was so good that I left out the salmon.

Ok, back to Property reading. Today's property question: Who owns the moon? I tried Google to see what was out there and found out that this band thinks that America does. For now they are the soundtrack to my property reading.

Assigned Inspiration

My Civil Procedures professor has us reading Storming the Court: How a Band of Law Students Fought the President - and Won by Brandt Goldstein. The book is fairly light reading (especially in comparison with my Contracts casebook). She has us reading it because she is a bleeding-heart-liberal (her words, not mine), which, of course, I love, and because much of the book hinges on key moments of procedure. It helps you learn and appreciate their importance just as when reading Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air you learn and appreciate some of the pivotal elements of technical climbing. Now, don't worry Mom and Dad, she has us reading plenty of weighty papers and cases to make sure we understand it all in depth. This is just to charge us up and give it some inspiring context.

In addition to being a fascinating and inspiring read about some very determined law students and lawyers, it is incredibly relevant to many current and (if we continue down this foreign policy path) many future political situations. It particular it deals with the legal rights of non-citizens under US care on foreign soil that is fully under US Military control. In other words, it hinges on how the US can and cannot treat non-citizens being held, against their will, at Guantanamo and whether or not the US president has the right to make the decision to override established law. The non-citizens in this situation are Haitian refugees fleeing a political coup not Middle Eastern detainees, and the US president is Bush Sr. not Bush Jr.

I promise not to recommend that you read anything else I'm reading here this semester (unless you are suffering from insomnia), but you should pick this up. Make it your last summer read.

Hey. Just a quick check in before I run off to school. Today is the last day of the first week. Yesterday, Professor Fisk (CivPro) asked us how long it felt like we'd been in law school. There was a fairly unanimous answer of weeks.

It has been an intense week. The workload is everything that was promised by all of the law school lore. Fortunately, the lore-promised cut-throat atmosphere of competition does not exist here. Everyone is friendly, helpful and intelligent. Duke does grade on a curve, so we'll see how that helpfulness changes the closer we get to exam time. I don't think it will.

I have managed to get up at 6am every day this week and fit a workout in before class. I'm pretty tired, but I think I need to work on getting to bed earlier rather than sacrificing that workout time. I have a feeling it will help keep me going.

Well, I'm not making that much sense so far this morning. Doesn't bode well for CivPro. (kidding)

Stolen Study Moment Update

I am taking a short break from my work before I start working on my Legal Writing assignment. I have been working since 5:30 with only short breaks to get more water, heat up dinner, etc. It is 9:45 now and I am almost done. Luckily I worked a lot on Contracts this weekend or I would still have more of that to read.

Class today was interesting and exciting. I felt comfortable participating in the discussions, but not sure how I should be taking notes so that they will be useful later. I was surprised at first that taking notes on my laptop was so natural and comfortable. Then I realized how terrible my handwriting is and how much better I am at typing.

I was too awake to fall asleep when I should have gone to bed last night, so I ended up getting to bed later than I wanted. Falling asleep will not be a problem tonight. I am determined not to sacrifice my morning workouts to sleep. If I am too tired, I will just have to figure out a way to get my work done earlier.

I have a couple of hour-long blocks of time during the day tomorrow. I think I will sacrifice this time to getting some more Contracts reading done so that I can continue to stay on top of that without adding it to my nightly reading. We'll see how that works out.

First Week

Sorry I haven't posted anything all week. They have been keeping us really busy. We've had about a hundred different lectures on ethics, panels on leadership, lunch discussions about professionalism and field trips about community service. So far, we've taken the Professionalism Pledge, the Honor Code Pledge, the Pro Bono Pledge (happy to do that one) and the Legal Writing Pledge (seriously). They are a little pledge happy here.

Yesterday morning I attended the Pro Bono Panel. There are so many incredible opportunities. The master list of pro bono work opportunities available is 79 pages long! Luckily the Dean of the Public Interest and Pro Bono Programs will sit down with you one-on-one, interview you about your experience, goals and interests, and make suggestions about what work might be the most rewarding and instructive. I am itching to get involved with the Innocence Project, and I hope I can give some time to more than one thing.

After that panel, we had a presentation by Darryl Hunt and his attorney Mark Rabil. His story is amazing not only for the horror of the 20+ years he spent in prison but mostly for his incredible determination to move with his experience into the future to help other people and his refusal to dwell on the tragedy of what was done to him. If it sounds familiar, you may have seen the documentary The Trials of Darryl Hunt which should be released on DVD soon and back on HBO later this fall. I've only seen exerpts, so I'll be watching for it.

Today we had our first class, a legal writing class. We have another legal writing class tomorrow and then all of our classes start next week. I worked for a few hours tonight on my assignment for tomorrow's class. When I finally had it done really well, I couldn't get it to print. Brandon spent about half an hour looking at it for me and finally figured out that it was some sort of issue with the Duke network having reset my IP address. All is fixed now.

On a final note, tonight is the 2 year anniversary of Drinking Liberally of Memphis. I know they are celebrating in style. Happy Birthday, guys!

Antici . . . pation

Sorry about the goofy Rocky Horror reference.

Orientation week starts tomorrow. I am crazed with anticipation. I keep checking the online course announcement program, Blackboard, to see if any more of my classes have posted announcements or initial assignments. I keep rethinking the Jones-Clinton-Ferguson brief, but not actually settling down to work on it again. I have had the Lawyer Education And Development (LEAD) packet on Where Do you Draw the Line: Ethics and Professionalism Hypotheticals sitting in front of me for the last 30 min. It is full of these little moral and ethical quandaries the we are supposed to contemplate for discussion at the ethics panel tomorrow. I just can't bring myself to read the little morality lessons again.

Real class work doesn't start until next week. Well, except for our Legal Research and Writing class which starts on Thursday.

I have my daytime outfit (business casual is suggested) picked out for tomorrow's daytime events. I have tried on my suit and found the right shirt for the Student & Faculty Reception tomorrow night at the Nasher Museum of Art.

Yesterday we (Brandon) installed a new door in the bedroom so that we could put in a dog door. Now I won't feel worried and guilty about leaving them at home all day.

A few minutes ago Brandon suggested that we go see a movie this afternoon. I think it is an excellent idea. I'm sure I'll be a nut this evening.

Let the games begin.

A Whirlwind Time

Since Mom went home it has just been a whirlwind. On Tuesday after she left we drove 4 hours up to IKEA and bought ridiculously cheap Scandanavian furniture. We now actually have somewhere to sit and eat dinner.

Our friend Jaime, who lives only a few hours away now, came down to visit for the weekend. I don't have any pictures of that, but we had a great time.

This week I got my class schedule. It doesn't seem too bad. I'll start at 8:30 each morning, be done by 3:30 Mon-Thurs and by 12:00 on Friday.

I went on Wednesday and bought my books. I got a couple of decent used books, but most of them were only available new. My Contracts prof requires four large books, while the other sections are only buying one and two. Oh, and this may not mean anything to you, but there are no study-aids that follow my Civil Procedure text. CivPro is supposed to be realy hard. It just means I will have to work at it that much harder.

I also worked on our orientation assignment case brief this week. Paula Corbin Jones v. William Jefferson Clinton in an Arkansas US District Court. It was very entertaining. Here's an exerpt:

While the Court will certainly agree that plaintiff's allegations describe offensive conduct, the Court, as previously noted, has found that the Governor's alleged conduct does not constitute sexual assualt. Rather, the conduct as alleged by plaintiff describes a mere sexual proposition or encounter, albeit an odious one, that was relatively brief in duration, did not involve any coercion or threats of reprisal and was abandoned as soon as plaintiff made clear that the advance was not welcome.

The phrase "albeit and odious one" just cracked me up.

Arrrrghhh . . . Pirates

Well, so much has been going on, and so much is about to be going on that I don't think I'll ever get back to blog about Mom and my wonderful trip to Beaufort and New Bern. But here are some of the pictures we took.
This was the view out of our hotel window in Beaufort. The town is on more of an inlet than on the ocean, but it was beautiful.

This is the view off the main boardwalk in town. There were big beautiful boat all over the place. The strip of land you can see to the left in the photo is called Carrot Island. There is a small herd of wild horses that live over there. Just past Carrot Island is a larger island whose name I can't remember. On that island there is a large herd of wild Mustangs descended from the horses who were pushed off of the Spanish ships in a storm to lighten the load.
This is our tourguide on the Blackbeard tour of Beaufort. It was a blast. I think Mom and I were the only ones there without small children in tow.
This is a photograph of Blackbeard's house, the Hammock House. It was one of many houses he owned in port towns up and down the coast. At the time the water came much further into shore, and at high tide you could row a skiff right up to the front steps. If you have ever heard the story about Blackbeard's less than willing 13th wife, this is the house he left her in. The house is a private residence, so I couldn't get a good picture of the enormous tree in the back yard from which he hung the unfortunate girl.
On our way back, Mom and I stopped for a look at the crashing waves of the ocean at Atlantic Beach. It was hot outside, so we didn't stay too long, but I got this nice shot of the boardwalk.

Zombie Rights

I finally ordered my Memphis Zombie Massacre t-shirt. I plan on wearing to school whenever we cover the issue of Undead Rights.

Just because you rise from your grave to feast on human flesh doesn't mean you aren't an American citizen, you know.

Got Him

Bishop, our Boarder Collie mix, is incredibly difficult to photograph. His shiny black fur is like dark matter in the realm of photography. He usually comes out looking like a funny black shape with two really bright eyes. Yesterday, while Brandon was hanging the new wall cabinets in our dining room (more about that later) I got down really close and got this photo with my phone. It captures him perfectly.

Mom's Visit Part II

On Wednesday of last week, Mom and I went to check out the law school. So, here is a picture of me in front of my new, law school home at Duke.

After that we went over to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. The Gardens are located on the Duke campus free and open to the public. The picture above is of the fountain at the entrance building.

The gardens cover 55 acres, so we certainly didn't see all of it. We spent most of our time in the Terrace Gardens with rows of terraced plants leading to a pond of water lilies.

I took all of these photos with my phone, so the resolution isn't very high, but they came out pretty well.

Many of the plants in the terraced gardens are flowers and plants you could find down at your local Home Depot, but the overall effect was amazing.

It was fun to walk along and see the funny tall shrubs that we have in front of our house and learn that they are a Japanese Holly with the common name "Sky Pencil."

We walked back through the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum which was serene and lovely. Mom is actually off to the right in this picture. She would probably fly back to NC and kill me if I put a picture of her up here, so I cropped it.

The truth of the visit is that we only went to the gardens was because I had read that there was a cafe and thought it would be a nice place to have lunch. Once we got there we discovered that the cafe (really more of a sandwich kiosk) was deep in the Terrace Garden, so we went. It was a lovely accident.