Searching for Justice is a panel sponsored by the Innocence Project at Elon Law and the Elon University undergraduate chapter of Phi Alpha Delta.
The panel will explore flaws in the criminal justice system and spread awareness for those wrongfully incarcerated as a result of those flaws.
To set the foundation for this event, the HBO award winning documentary, “The Trials of Daryll Hunt” will be screened on Monday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m. in Elon University’s Koury Business Center LaRose Digital Theater.
The April 20 panel will begin at 7 p.m. at the law school in Room 207 and will feature:
Daryll Hunt, an African-American man from Winston-Salem, North Carolina who, in 1984, was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a young white newspaper copy editor, Deborah Sykes, but was later exonerated by DNA evidence. He served 19 and a half years in prison before he was freed after review and exoneration. Mr. Hunt is involved in the Innocence Project and has started his own group called the Daryll Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice.
Mark Rabil, an adjunct professor of law at Wake Forest University School of Law, he is also the Innocence and Justice Clinic Director. He is an assistant capital defender in Forsyth County whose advocacy led to the release and exoneration of Mr. Hunt after 19 years of incarceration. Rabil had been practicing law for four years when he was court-appointed to assist a senior partner in his law firm in representing Hunt. In 2004 he was awarded the Thurgood Marshall Award by the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers, now North Carolina Advocates for Justice, for his representation of Hunt.
Mike Klinkosum: In February 2010, Mr. Klinkosum and his partner Joseph B. Cheshire V, along with Christine Mumma, won a declaration of innocence for their client, Gregory F. Taylor, who had been wrongfully convicted of murder and imprisoned for 16 years. The three judge panel’s ruling is the first time in U.S. legal history that a court of law has declared a person “innocent” of the crimes with which he/she has been previously charged and convicted. In June 2010, Klinkosum was awarded the Kellie Crabtree Award from North Carolina Advocates for Justice for his work in the Taylor case. In being awarded the Kellie Crabtree Award for his work in the Taylor case, he has achieved the distinction of being the only attorney to have received the Kellie Crabtree Award more than once.
Kelly Deangelus: A staff attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, Deangelus, along with co-counsel Mike Klinkosum, was awarded the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Award in February of 2008, given in recognition of outstanding contributions to advancing civil liberties in North Carolina and for their four year legal battle to win the freedom of Floyd Brown, a mentally retarded man from Wadesboro, N.C. who was wrongfully charged with murder in 1993 and held without a trial on the charges in a state mental hospital for 14 years.