奋力一搏：肯·罗斯
波士顿大学法学院校友分享了他对公共服务的热情。
从死刑和人口贩卖到贫困和歧视，许多波士顿大学法学院的校友被呼吁为变革而努力，在公共部门、政府和非营利组织中产生重大影响。 在这些地区服务的灵感来自许多地方。 对于这些校友中的许多人来说，他们对社会正义的热情来自于他们在法学院的经历。
For a recent 记录 校友杂志, BU Law sat down with four alumni to discuss their law school experiences and what led them to public service. We highlight here our conversation with Ken Rose (’81), who recently retired from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
Ken Rose’s original career plan was military service, but after two years at the US Military Academy in West Point, he realized that it wasn’t the right fit. Finishing college in St. Louis, the New Orleans native came to BU Law for its “excellent academics” and to see more of the country. He also came for what was then a more unique opportunity at law schools: 法律诊所.
他说，当时，临床项目是对传统法学院教育的重大改变。 “They’ve since become more popular around the country, but when I was looking at schools, BU Law was one of the few with dedicated clinical programs that allowed students to get hands-on experience in public interest work.” Participating in both a legal services and criminal law clinic, Rose says, was “incredible preparation for a career in public interest law.”
临近毕业时，他回忆起与法学名誉教授伊娃·尼尔森（Eva Nilsen）讨论工作选择的情景。尼尔森建议他调查亚特兰大一家名为“团队辩护项目”（Team Defense Project）的小型非营利组织，该组织代表死刑犯。 “I drove down over winter break and was hooked,” he says.
Death penalty litigation was a “chaotic field” in those days, explains Rose. “At Team Defense, we were doing so many cases in multiple states that it was about triage,” he says. “These cases typically had a low level of representation because there was almost no money to support them. 例如，密西西比州有一条规定，律师在审判案件中获得的报酬不能超过1000美元。 The money across the South was pitiful, especially considering the complexity of the cases and the need to pay experts and obtain additional support.”
Funded by charitable donations, the group’s initial strategy was to engage in complex and protracted litigation to deter states from pursuing the death penalty. “When that didn’t work, we consoled ourselves by focusing on helping individual clients—and we won many of those cases,” says Rose.
Three years later, Rose and his wife moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where he opened a law firm and helped launch the Mississippi Capital Defense Resource Center, where he served as director before moving to North Carolina for his wife’s job.
刚当上爸爸的罗斯在家陪着儿子，为北卡罗来纳州的律师资格考试学习，最终在家里开了一家律师事务所，受理直接上诉案件。 In 1996, he became director of North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation. 在担任主任10年后，他转型为高级职员律师，专注于代表死刑犯。
罗斯说，他的工作分为两个领域：立法努力和辩护案件。 On the legislative side, he says that one of the “most important things” he has done in North Carolina is his work on the Racial Justice Act.
“The groundbreaking law, which was the first of its kind nationwide, allowed death row inmates to bring forward evidence that their sentences had been tainted by racial bias. Because of the law, the role that race plays in capital trials was quantified and brought to light for the first time,” he says, noting that a study showed that African Americans were systematically denied the right to serve on capital juries in North Carolina. “We found undeniable evidence that racial bias is still a huge factor in deciding who is sentenced to death in North Carolina.”
As for public defense cases, he’s worked on too many to count during his 35-year career representing low-income clients on death row, many of whom are mentally ill and intellectually disabled. One of the more prominent cases was his defense of Levon “Bo” Jones, who was convicted of a 1987 murder. 《最后的律师：拯救死刑犯的斗争, by John Temple, describes Rose’s work on this case, which resulted in the release of Jones in 2008 after 15 years on death row.
另一个值得注意的案件涉及亨利·麦科勒姆和莱昂·布朗兄弟，他们在1984年被判犯有谋杀罪并被判处死刑。 这个复杂的案件涉及不一致的录取、智力残疾和新发现的DNA证据。 两人都在2014年被宣告无罪。
“After 35 years of representing people on death row, I’m grateful to Professor Nilsen and the law school for leading me in that direction. They knew who I was and what I cared about and helped me to find a good fit,” says Rose, who was awarded the National Legal Aid & Defender Association’s 2015 Kutak-Dodds Prize for his “extraordinary commitment to defending indigent clients facing the death penalty.”
这个功能最初出现在 记录波士顿大学法学院的校友杂志。 点击这里阅读全文。