Release date: Sept. 10, 2004
Contact: Elaine Justice at 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

Emory Law Student's Work Helps Exonerate Ga. Inmate

Jason Costa will never forget his first summer internship as a law student at Emory University. Working with the two-year-old Georgia Innocence Project (GIP), Costa was able to help track down DNA evidence that exonerated Clarence Harrison of Decatur, Ga., who was convicted of robbery, rape and kidnapping 17 years ago. Harrison was released Aug. 31after spending almost 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

To say that Costa and his fellow student interns have been energized by the experience is an understatement. "How do you follow that? I was just thrilled," says Costa of Harrison's exoneration. "If students can accomplish this, think what others working full time can do. Hopefully this will encourage more people to do this kind of work."

Now Costa is coordinating a volunteer effort to help Harrison get his life back, from getting a driver's license to obtaining a copy of his birth certificate so that he can apply for a job. Because this is the project's first exoneration, says Aimee Maxwell, GIP executive director, "we had the general idea that we wanted to help him after he was exonerated, but we had not made any plans. We are just now putting it together."

Costa also is helping Harrison prepare for his Sept. 18 wedding to Yvonne Zellers, whom he proposed to while still in prison. "He's more than a client," says Maxwell of Harrison. "He's a friend."

GIP, which began accepting requests for assistance in January 2003, now has some 1,400 requests and to date has taken only seven cases. In an extensive screening process, the project has some 400 cases under investigation, which are divided among the nine student interns who comprise Maxwell's staff and fill the one-room office in midtown Atlanta.

"Most of the legal work is done by the interns; they read the documents, prepare and basically reinvestigate the cases," she says. Once they decide on a good case, students work with some of the best volunteer lawyers in the state to bring the case to court.

Although Costa and Laura Verduci, a third-year law student from Georgia State University, have done most of the work on Harrison's case, the first interns to recognize the merits of his innocence claim were GSU Law School graduate Emily Gilbert, now a public defender in DeKalb County, Ga., and Tracy Shessler, a 2004 Emory graduate who majored in sociology and violence studies.

For more on the Georgia Innocence Project and the Clarence Harrison case, go to: www.ga-innocenceproject.org

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