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California Racial Justice Act Conference

Agenda

Day 1 | October 23

8:30-9:00 | Registration

UC Irvine Law Courtyard

9:00-9:10 | Welcome Remarks

EDU 1111

Dean Austen Parrish, UC Irvine School of Law

9:10-10:40 | The State of RJA Litigation: Voices from the SoCal Front Lines

EDU 1111

Moderator: Belle Yan, Assistant Professor and Supervising Attorney, USF School of Law’s Racial Justice Clinic 

Panelists:

Rose Angulo, RJA Attorney, Orange County Public Defender’s Office

Colleen Bazdarich, RJA Attorney, San Bernardino County Public Defender’s Office

Jessica Arteaga, RJA Attorney, Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office

Damon Jenkins, Deputy Public Defender, Ventura County Public Defender’s Office

Amy Hoffman, Chief Deputy Public Defender, San Diego County Department of the Public Defender, Multiple Conflicts Office

10:50-12:20 | Making Meaning for the Court: Collaborations Between RJA Practitioners & Experts

EDU 1111

Moderator: Rose Angulo, Racial Justice Act Attorney, Orange County Public Defender's Office

Panelists:

Karina Alvarez, RJA Attorney, Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office

Bryan Sykes, Professor, Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy

Jody Armour, Roy E. Crocker Professor of Law, University of Southern California

David-James Gonzales, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Brigham Young University

Marisa Omori, Associate Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis

12:20-12:50 | Lunch

UC Irvine Law Courtyard

12:50-1:35 | So-Cal Spotlight: What does emerging RJA research tell us?

EDU 1111

Presenters:

Lisa Romo, Researcher, Racial Justice Advocate & Criminal Defense Attorney

Kyla Bourne, Postdoctoral Scholar, Criminology, Law & Society, UC Irvine

Additional Researchers:

Catherine Grosso, Professor of Law, Michigan State College of Law

Mona Lynch, Chancellor’s Professor, Criminology, Law & Society and Law, UC Irvine

Marisa Omori, Associate Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis

1:45-3:15 | Concurrent Sessions

New Directions for Advocacy: Data Transparency & Access

EDU 1131

Moderator: Annie Lai, Clinical Professor of Law, UC Irvine School of Law

Speakers:

Emi MacLean, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California

Brooke McCarthy, Racial Justice Act Attorney, Office of the State Public Defender

Aparna Komarla, Founder and Lead Data Scientist, Redo.io

Priscilla Ocen, Professor of Law, Loyola Law School

New Knowledge: Applying Scholarship to RJA Litigation

EDU 1111

Facilitator: Belle Yan, Assistant Professor and Supervising Attorney, USF School of Law’s Racial Justice Clinic

Timekeeper: Catherine Grosso, Professor of Law, Michigan State College of Law

Lightning Round Presenters:

Elsa Chen, Racial Disparities in Three Strikes Charging, Disposition, and Sentencing

Nick Meyerson & Michele Bedoya, Beyond Fatal Encounters: Disparities in Police Violence Across California, 2018-2024

Nick Petersen, Spatial-Racial Disparities in California's Capital Punishment (1987-2019)

Sophia Castillo, Disability, Racialized Policing, and the Institutional Production of Police Records: What RIPA Data Can—and Cannot—Tell Us About Discrimination

Rebecca Heilman, Mindy Friedman & Evelyn Carter, The Missing Liaison in RJA Statistical Claims

3:25-4:55 | Concurrent Sessions

New Directions for Advocacy: Racial Justice Lessons from Rap on Trial

EDU 1111

Moderator Jonathan Markovitz, ACLU of Southern California

Speakers:

Jack I. Lerner, Clinical Professor of Law, Director, Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic, UC Irvine (co-author of Rap on Trial Legal Guide)

Charis Kubrin, Chancellor’s Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, UC Irvine (co-author of Rap on Trial Legal Guide)
Dr. Jabari Evans, University of South Carolina
Willie "Prophet" Stiggers, Black Music Action Coalition

Emerging Defenders & Law Students Session

EDU 1131

Facilitator: Ji Seon Song, Professor of Law, UC Irvine School of Law

Open to all law students and emerging/future public defenders

Data Hackathon

MPAA 100

Facilitators:

Jason Tsui, Director of Research and Data Analytics, Center for Policing Equity

Tarak Shah, Data Scientist, U.S. Projects Lead, Human Rights Data Analysis Group

Speaker:

Courtney Echols, Assistant Professor of Sociology & Criminology, University of Utah

5:15-6:30 | Reception - Celebrating Racial Justice Solidarity

UC Irvine Division of Continuing Education Courtyard

Day 2 | October 24

9:00-9:30 | Check-In & Connection Building

UC Irvine Division of Continuing Education Courtyard

9:30-9:45 | Opening Talk

DCE 2070-209DDD0

Speaker: Robert S. Chang, Professor of Law and Executive Director of the UC Irvine Fred. T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality

9:45-11:15 | Intersectionality Roundtable: Race, Gender & the RJA

DCE 2070-2090

Moderator: Bahar Mirhosseni, Lecturer, UC Irvine School of Law; Director of Legal Advocacy, Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide

Speakers:

Dr. Sherese King, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago  

Jane Brown, Racial Justice Act Attorney, Alameda County Public Defender's Office

Romarilyn Ralston, Executive Director, UCLA Prison Education Program and Center for Justice, co-founder of the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, abolitionist scholar

Sherene Razack, Distinguished Professor and the Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at UCLA, Founder of the virtual teaching and research network Racial Violence Hub and the digital project Race and Deaths in Custody

Grace Kyungwon Hong, Professor of Asian American Studies and Gender Studies at UCLA; Co-Principal Investigator, UC Sentencing Project

11:15-11:45 | Lunch

DCE Courtyard

11:45-1:15 | Concurrent Sessions

Resisting Criminalization Roundtable

DCE 2090

Moderator: Ana Muñiz, Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, School of Social Ecology, UC Irvine

Speakers:

Xavier España, Silicon Valley De-Bug

Crystal Guerra, Co-Executive Director & Co-Founder of Underground GRIT

Suzanne Campbell, Co-Executive Director & Co-Founder of Underground GRIT

Laila Aziz, Director of Operations, Pillars of the Community

Elizabeth Lashley-Haynes, Deputy Public Defender, Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office

Sean Garcia-Leyes, Executive Director, Peace and Justice Law Center

New Knowledge: Applying Scholarship to RJA Litigation

DCE 2070-2080

Facilitator: Lisa Romo, Researcher, Racial Justice Advocate & Criminal Defense Attorney  

Timekeeper: Catherine Grosso, Professor of Law, Michigan State College of Law

Lightning Round Presenters:

Ian Duke, Private by Design: Adapting Open-Weight Large Language Models to Support Racial Justice Act Investigations

Kyle Winnen & Charis Kubrin (not presenting), ‘His Lyrics are His Life’: How Prosecutors Use Rap Evidence to Craft Case-Winning Narratives

Lucy Jewel, Racially Discriminatory Language in Perkins Operations

Marie Wako, Racialized Language in Criminal Courtrooms

Mikah Thompson, Just Quoting? The N-Word, Racial Bias, and the California Racial Justice Act
Laura Sheppard, Adultification Bias in Criminal Sentencing: Examining The Intersection Between Age, Racial Bias, And Adult Criminal Sentencing Disparities

1:25-2:25 | Closing Session: Reflections on the Future of the RJA

DCE Courtyard

Speakers:

Genevie Gold, Racial Justice Act Attorney, Office of the State Public Defender  

Mona Lynch, Chancellor’s Professor, Criminology, Law & Society, School of Social Ecology, UC Irvine

Adam Vining, Assistant Public Defender – Writs and Appeals, Orange County Public Defender’s Office

Jason Tsui, Director of Research and Data Analytics, Center for Policing Equity

Conference Sponsors