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Attorney Mike Ware (left center) and exoneree Richard Miles (right center) were joined by the WIP board at the conclusion of the luncheon on Sept. 24, 2012. — Photo by Dan Brothers Richard Miles shares prison ordeal He was only 19 years old when he was arrested in 1994. Despite little evidence, he was found guilty and sentenced to 60 years behind bars. Richard Miles then spent nearly 15 years in prison for a murder and an attempted murder that he did not commit. The Bernie Schuchmann Conference Center at Texas Wesleyan School of Law was packed to capacity by faculty, students, staff and guests on Sept. 24, 2012, wanting to hear Miles’ story, during the Wesleyan Innocence Project Exoneree Luncheon. “It is an honor and a pleasure to have been given the task of introducing Mr. Miles,” Mike Ware, WIP supervising attorney, said in his opening remarks. “He is an extraordinary human being.” Ware first heard about the case from Miles’ attorney, Cheryl Wattley, who was working with Centurion Ministries, an organization that investigates actual innocence cases, in Princeton, N.J. “Centurion had taken the Miles case,” Ware said, “and believed very, very strongly in it.” The case was presented to Ware, who at the time was head of the Conviction Integrity Unit in the Dallas County district attorney’s office. Reflecting, Ware noted that, “It sounded like a case that maybe did have some merit and did deserve further investigation. “Every time we went out and talked to a witness, every time we investigated further – the stronger the case for Richard Miles’ innocence seemed to be,” Ware observed. “The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals this year [2012] officially exonerated Richard Miles in a fascinating, 52-page published opinion.” “To be in the arena of the judicial system, you must have compassion,” Miles said as he began to share his ordeal with the conference center audience. In 1994, Miles was arrested by Dallas police for a fatal shooting at a Texaco station near Bachman Lake. He was detained in homicide while the police investigated his alibi. A short time later, a detective returned and said, “Your story checked out, but you’re going to prison. They have a witness.” Miles spent the next 17 months in the county jail until his jury trial in August 1995. He was then 20 years old. Despite none of Miles’ fingerprints being found at the scene, no weapon being found, and nine people saying that he was not the shooter – Miles was convicted and sentenced to 40 years for murder and 20 years for attempted murder. “Everything became black,” Miles recalled. “Freedom – people just don’t grasp the concept of freedom,” he said, as a free man talking to a crowd of law students in Fort Worth, while reflecting on his years of incarceration. “We take the small things in life for granted every day. The thing that was taken away from me and the thing that God gave everyone – and that is freedom. “My case was the first case ever where a person was actually exonerated where there was no DNA, nor confession, nor a recantation,” Miles said. “Way before I went to jury trial, someone had already called the police and told them that ‘my boyfriend has been bragging about killing two people last year at Bachman Lake and he showed me the 9mm gun.’” The caller went into great detail about the crime, divulging information that could have only come from someone who had been at the scene, as there had been no publicity about the murder. The police notes about that call had been withheld from both the defense and prosecution. “Nobody knows who dropped the ball,” Miles recalled. “The evidence was the key that eventually began to unlock the doors.” When he was released from prison in October 2009, Miles had not been exonerated. “It was hard,” he said. “It was really, really hard because people looked at me as if I was guilty.” On Feb. 15, 2012, Richard Miles was officially exonerated. “You never know the weight that you can push up off you, until it’s put on you,” Miles concluded, reflecting on his nearly 15 years in prison. 28
in ACADEMIA notes Cynthia Alkon Associate Professor of Law Publications: Accepted an offer to publish her article, “The Flawed U.S. Approach to Rule of Law Development,” in the Penn State Law Review (forthcoming 2013). Accepted an offer to publish her article, “Making a Deal in Criminal Law,” in The Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law (forthcoming 2013). The article will be part of a collection of articles discussing pedagogy in the context of the first year criminal law and is a followup to the panel discussion on this topic during the 2012 Southeastern Association of Law Schools annual conference held in Amelia Island, Fla., August 2012. Published the lead article, “Plea Bargaining, Just as it Ever Was,” in The Ohio State University online dispute resolution journal Mayhew-Hite Report on Dispute Resolution and the Courts, Vol. 10, Issue 4, May 2012. Activities: Along with Texas Wesleyan law professors Maxine Harrington, James McGrath and Mark Burge, participated as a facilitator during the conference Reforming and Renewing the Education of Profession: An Interactive Vision of Professionalism, which was coorganized by the law school, the UNT Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, the TCU Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences, and Brite Divinity School. The event was held in Fort Worth, Texas, Oct. 21, 2012. Presented at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools annual conference for the panel Criminal Law Pedagogy Roundtable. She was also a mentor through the SEALS New Scholars program during the same conference, August 2012. Stephen Alton Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Evening Division Programs Activities: Chaired three panels (“Perspectives on the Death Penalty,” “Law Goes Pop,” and “Courts & Religion: Legal Tests and Citizen Subjectivities”) at the 15 th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Texas Wesleyan School of Law, March 16-17, 2012. Susan Ayres Professor of Law Publications: Published “Pregnancy Denied, Pregnancy Rejected in Stephanie Daley” in Law, Culture and the Humanities (co-authored by Prema Manjunath, print edition forthcoming). 29 about Texas Wesleyan law faculty and administrators Had an article, “When Women Kill Newborns: The Rhetoric of Vulnerability,” accepted for publication (forthcoming, Cambridge Scholars Press). Published “Denial and Concealment of Unwanted Pregnancy” (co-author Prema Manjunath), 26 J. C. R. & Econ. Dev. (forthcoming 2012). Activities: Moderated a New Scholars Workshop panel at the SEALS conference held in Amelia Island, Fla., Aug. 2, 2012. Sahar Aziz Associate Professor of Law Publications: Accepted an offer of publication from the George Washington International Law Review for her paper “Revolution Without Reform? A Critique of Egypt’s Election Laws” (forthcoming January 2013). Accepted an offer of publication from the Oxford Islamic Journal Online for her paper “Heeding the Call of the Miner’s Canary Post-9/11” (forthcoming January 2013). Attended and submitted a briefing paper, “Promoting Rights as a Counterterrorism Tool: The Case of American Muslims,” at an international conference, Countering Violent Extremism: Dialogue, Training and Research, in Abu Dhabi, UAE, December 2012. “Protecting Rights as a Counterterrorism Tool: The Case of American Muslims” listed on SSRN’s Top Ten download list for Democratization: Building States & Democratic Processes eJournal and Islamic Law & Law of the Muslim World eJournal. Published “Egypt’s Protracted Revolution” in the American University Washington College of Law Human Rights Brief (October 2012). “Egypt’s Protracted Revolution” listed on SSRN’s Top Ten download list for PSN: Regime Transitions (Topic), PSN: Social Movements (Topic), Political Behavior: Race, Ethnicity & Identity Politics eJournal, and Political Institutions: Non-Democratic Regimes eJournal. Contributed to the “Ask The Expert” election column in the October 2012 issue of The Islamic Monthly magazine. Published an op-ed, “Anti-Muslim Extremist Video Calls for Counter-narrative by Mainstream Americans,” in The Huffington Post, Sept. 20, 2012. Published an op-ed article, “What Egypt women want,” in The Egypt Monocle, June 27, 2012. Co-authored an op-ed article, “As army and Brotherhood tussle, Egyptians look to US as guarantor,” in The Guardian, June 22, 2012. continued on next page…
Page 2 and 3: features 2 Advocacy program Makes g
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Page 7 and 8: 2012 Securities Dispute Resolution
Page 9 and 10: Jim Mathew ’12, Jeanette Walston
Page 11 and 12: McGrath Spends Fulbright Year in Ch
Page 13 and 14: such as myself are usually placed.
Page 15 and 16: the amazing street food. Some of my
Page 17 and 18: McGrath lectured to Chinese law stu
Page 19 and 20: Aric Short, associate dean for acad
Page 21 and 22: “It has been a great privilege to
Page 23 and 24: Terry Means was only 8 when he beca
Page 25 and 26: 2012-2013 New Faculty and Promotion
Page 27 and 28: Dear Alumni: In August of 2012, Dea
Page 29: Law school welcomes class of 2015 T
Page 33 and 34: Megan Carpenter Professor of Law Pu
Page 35 and 36: Presented on a panel to discuss “
Page 37 and 38: Participated in the Engaged Scholar
Page 39 and 40: ALUMNI Dear Alumni and Friends, I a
Page 41 and 42: Current employment: Law Offices of
Page 43 and 44: Dean Frederic White, Rick Kubes, Ne
Page 45 and 46: The Texas Wesleyan School of Law Al
Page 47 and 48: The Honor Campaign is a special ini
Page 49 and 50: Gold Donors $500-$999 Wayne Barnes
Page 51 and 52: ALUMNI 1997 Byron K. Henry was elec
Page 53 and 54: Current employment: Tarrant County
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