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The criminal adjudicatory process is meant in part to help crime victims heal. But for some crime victims, the process is re-victimizing. For decades, efforts have been made to make the criminal process fairer and more humane for victims. For example, state and federal laws are now designed to keep victims informed, allow them to be heard at sentencing, and afford them monetary restitution. But these efforts, while important, have not persuaded crime victims to trust criminal process. For example, sexual assaults remain grossly under-reported and under-prosecuted. Less than 1 percent of sexual assault crimes result in a felony conviction. Even the few victims who do receive their promised retributive outcome are not necessarily healed by the process. Reform efforts seem to presuppose that victims of crime – or victims of particular crimes such as sexual assault – are essentially the same and have essentially the same need, namely, a need for the offender to be criminally prosecuted and sent to prison to serve the longest sentence the law allows. However, sexual assault victims are a diverse group – racially, ethnically, socio-economically, and with respect to sexual identity – and they suffer varied harms because sexual assault encompasses a wide realm of misconduct and victim-offender relationships or lack thereof. Even when victims suffer similar harms and come from similar backgrounds, they often have distinct, though sometimes overlapping, needs and objectives. Some have no desire to participate in the criminal adjudication process at all. Some will be re-traumatized by a successful criminal prosecution, even with the implementation of procedural reforms promoted by the victims’ rights movement and others. Proceeding from the premise that victims are a diverse group with differing needs, we focus on victims who might prefer, and be better served by, a non-adversarial process that is centered on their needs, namely, restorative justice. However much improved, adversarial adjudication directed at convicting and incarcerating offenders risks re-traumatizing victims rather than promoting healing. It denies victims any significant control over the process, including control over their own narratives. We explore the value of restorative justice processes as an alternative that, in many criminal cases, may be preferable from victims’ perspective. We acknowledge that restorative justice processes are rarely employed in sexual assault cases in the United States and that prosecutors may have reasons, independent of victims’ perceived interests, for preferring the adversary process, a criminal conviction and imprisonment. Further, some victims’ advocates regard restorative justice as particularly inappropriate in the context of sexual assaults. Nonetheless, we suggest that when victims voluntarily choose to engage in a restorative justice process, it may be healing, because it gives victims agency in seeking a reckoning that fits with their particular needs and offers possibilities for addressing and repairing the harm that a criminal prosecution cannot.

Outbreaks of several highly pathogenic viruses such as Ebola virus, Marburg virus, and Nipah virus occur periodically in some parts of the world. Because these viruses are highly infectious and associated with high mortality rates, there is some concern that one or more of them could be developed as a bioweapon. In order to be able to effectively treat victims of outbreaks as well as understand and counter the possibility of one of these agents being used in an act of bioterrorism, they are studied extensively in specialized labs throughout the world. Nonhuman primates are frequently used as models in the study of high consequence viral pathogens because of their similarity to humans. Typically, a nonhuman primate species is selected as a model for each virus based on similarity of disease course to that in humans. In addition to species selection, a challenge route must be selected according to the specific goals of the proposed study. In spite of there not having ever been a documented case of a human contracting any of these viruses via aerosol transmission, aerosol challenge is common in these types of studies due to concerns that one of these viruses could be altered in some way, as a bioterrorism agent, that would allow it to infect via aerosols. Since the lungs are the primary challenge site in an aerosol infection, valuable information could be gleaned from monitoring changes in the lungs. Unfortunately, there is a scarcity in the published literature of information about the normal lung environment in nonhuman primate (NHP) species. In order to determine abnormalities that occur due to infection and pathogenesis it is important to first determine what that environment typically looks like in a normal uninfected individual of the same species. In this work, the lung environment in normal rhesus macaques and African Green monkeys was characterized through the use of flow cytometric analysis of both lung tissues and bronchoalveolar lavage. Normal values for leukocyte composition were determined via 16-color flow cytometry and then the same assay was used to evaluate the lung environment of rhesus macaques infected with Ebola virus and African Green monkeys that had been infected with Nipah virus via aerosol challenge.

Prosecutors, the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system, also have the most difficult job: they must be “ministers of justice.” A prosecutor’s core mission is to vindicate the truth, rather than strive to “win” by accumulating a track record of convictions. When evidence comes to light suggesting that a wrongful conviction has occurred, a prosecutor’s ethical obligation requires admitting to a terrible mistake and working to undo it. Many conscientious prosecutors accept this responsibility and confess to their errors. But too many do not. They insist, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that wrongfully convicted people are in fact guilty. These prosecutors actively work to delay justice. Some are so committed to adhering to the original mistake that they fail to prosecute the actual perpetrators. Much has been written about how to change the culture that leads to prosecutors’ reflexive doubling-down on wrongful convictions: public shaming in judicial opinions, more rigorous ethical training in law school and on the job, and sharper oversight by state bars. These measures are necessary, but they are insufficient. To curtail innocence-denying, the narrative must change about what it means to be a “good prosecutor,” historically defined as a tough-on- crime fighter whose overriding goal is to obtain and preserve convictions. This mindset pits a prosecutor’s self-interest in getting and preserving guilty verdicts against his or her ethical obligations, which require confessing error and reversing course where credible evidence of innocence exists. The explosion of interest in wrongful conviction cases, narrated as true crime stories in podcasts, documentaries, and other media, has begun to erode the power of traditional narrative. The public is now better informed about the ethical obligations of prosecutors and the consequences of violating these obligations. This, in turn, has led to important, to the election of reform-minded candidates who defeated innocence-denying incumbents by running on progressive platforms, including a commitment to revisiting wrongful conviction cases. In this article, I argue that these “good prosecutor” stories can be woven into a coherent and compelling meta-narrative that can help put an end to innocence denying. When the new exoneration narrative becomes predominant, prosecutors who embrace their ethical obligations and correct miscarriages of justice will have everything to gain because the voters will see them as courageous and just. Innocence deniers by contrast, will be rendered unelectable.

This Article approaches prosecutorial misconduct from a pedagogical perspective by exploring the ways in which law school clinicians can teach their students how to confront the problem proactively and in-the-moment, with an eye toward reducing its rate of occurrence and blunting its corrosive effect. Prosecutorial misconduct is a serious problem that strikes at the heart of a criminal defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial. More broadly, it has the potential to impact the integrity of the criminal justice system as a whole. Educating law school students in criminal clinics about this issue before they become prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys serves three important goals. First, such instruction can act as preventative medicine by reducing the likelihood that future prosecutors will step over the line out of ignorance of the applicable case law and court rules or out of a misplaced desire to win at all costs. Second, it enables future defense counsel to develop litigation methods designed to prevent the problem from occurring in the first instance. Third, it can prepare defense counsel to recognize prosecutorial misconduct that proves unpreventable so that she is able to respond effectively in-the-moment rather than belatedly, after the harm has been done. The blended learning approach that is the signature pedagogy of the clinical classroom is well-suited to addressing prosecutorial misconduct because it provides an opportunity for students to engage in a frank and thoughtful dissection of the legal and ethical issues that are inextricably bound up with it. The model I propose combines instruction in black letter law, ethics, and skills acquisition. It also seeks to have clinicians model the process of analyzing and responding to prosecutorial misconduct using examples from their real world experiences. With this approach, students will learn to think critically about their roles and responsibilities as future prosecutors and defense attorneys and to develop sound professional judgment before they enter the whirlwind of practice.