The Mills Criminal Defense Clinic is the only legal organization in the country devoted primarily to representing individuals facing life imprisonment under California's Three Strikes law, which was enacted by voter-approved initiative in 1994. The Clinic represents defendants charged under the Three Strikes law with minor, non-violent offenses at every stage of the criminal process: at trial, on appeal, and in state and federal post-conviction habeas corpus proceedings. Current clients include inmates serving life sentences for stealing one dollar in loose change from a parked car; for writing bad checks; and for simple possession of less than a gram of narcotics.
Clinic students work in teams of two and take primary responsibility for all aspects of the Clinic's legal work. Students are responsible for managing relationships with Clinic clients, including visiting clients in prison; students also conduct factual investigations in the field throughout California, research case law and draft court pleadings, and argue cases in open court. Much of the Clinic's work involves novel and complex appellate and post-conviction constitutional litigation. Clinic attorneys supervise student work and meet weekly with each student team.
The Clinic also includes a seminar component, which covers instruction on research and writing skills, investigation techniques, and advanced doctrinal analysis of state and federal criminal law. The seminar also involves presentations from guest speakers, including public policy advocates, outside counsel, and experts in forensic psychology. In the course of a semester, each student team is expected to complete at least one major written project. That project depends on the timing and posture of each case but typically consists of a substantial legal brief for filing in state or federal court.
The Clinic was founded in 2006 by Professor Larry Marshall, who played a key role in exonerating many wrongfully-convicted death row inmates and in reversing the death sentences of over 100 condemned inmates in Illinois. One of the aspirations of the Clinic is to adopt clinical pedagogy, litigation strategies, and policy reform developed in the context of capital and innocence programs throughout the country and apply them to the Clinic's cases under the Three Strikes law.
The Clinic is supervised and instructed by Michael Romano, who maintains a small criminal defense and civil rights law practice in San Francisco, and Galit Lipa, a former public defender in California and Washington DC.
"In our country, we have the right to counsel that is much heralded, but poorly implemented. We have legal rights that aren't backed up with resources; we have a legal process that, in theory, is fair and non-discriminatory, accurate, and race-neutral, yet the reality is painfully distant from the ideal."
Professor Larry Marshall, Director, Criminal Defense Clinic