On Thursday, March 3, John Hollway C’92, MAPP’18, Executive Director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, and Ross Miller, the Center’s Assistant Director, will participate in the 17th annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, “Justice at the Crossroads: Is the Reform Window Closing?” The annual two-day symposium brings together leading researchers and policymakers with journalists to deepen the public understanding of the most relevant crime and violence issues in the United States.
Hollway and Miller will take part in a panel on prosecutorial misconduct, with Hollway moderating. Miller will discuss the Quattrone Center’s recently published report “Hidden Hazards,” which details the findings of the Center’s review of 4,644 opinions issued in Pennsylvania state and federal courts between 2000 and 2016 containing 7,207 separate claims of prosecutorial misconduct. In the study, Quattrone researchers found a lack of systemic transparency, significant challenges regarding access to information, and a lack of functional accountability mechanisms and deterrents throughout the state’s criminal justice system. Two categories of misconduct were responsible for over half of the claims identified in the study: improper withholding of exculpatory evidence by prosecutors and improper comments made by prosecutors during closing arguments.
The prosecutorial misconduct panel will also include Mark Fondacaro, former Director, Doctoral Training Program in Psychology & Law at John Jay College; Kim Foxx, Cook County State’s Attorney; and Miriam Krinsky, Director, Fair and Just Prosecution.
Each year in conjunction with the symposium, the Quattrone Center also provides limited Sentinel Event Reporting Fellowships, which support attendance at the conference for up to four senior investigative journalists who propose projects that apply Sentinel Event “stakeholder” skills to investigations relating to the justice system, either nationally or at their local level.
“The symposium provides a unique opportunity for journalists to engage with a wide range of criminal justice practitioners and reformers to better understand efforts to improve the system,” said Hollway. “We are proud to support the Sentinel Event Reporting Fellows, who take the knowledge gained at the symposium and bring it back to criminal justice reporting in their home cities.”
All sessions of the symposium will be held as Zoom webinars, which are free to the public and require prior registration.
Read a Q&A with Miller on the invisibility of prosecutorial misconduct.