CLEAR Welcomes 19 Summer Interns

08.22.24 — This summer, Northeastern Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Clinic (CRRJ),  Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR) and  Criminal Justice Task Force welcomed 19 interns  from across the country.

“In addition to the case investigations, these students have supported our interdisciplinary projects and research into police killing reports, and conducted research for our federal reparations project,” said Malcolm Clarke, CRRJ’s Elizabeth Zitrin Justice Fellow, who supervised the students throughout the summer.

“I feel very fortunate to have seen the growth of these students over the course of the summer, and how capable they demonstrated themselves to be,” said Clarke. “I have appreciated having the opportunity to work with them and look forward to seeing what they do in the future.”

The group also worked closely alongside Professor Margaret Burnham, director of CRRJ and faculty co-Director of CLEAR, and Professor Deborah Ramirez, direct of CJTF and faculty co-director of CLEAR.

This summer, Burnham and Professor Kris Manjapra, a CLEAR fellow and Stearns Trustee Professor of History and Global Studies, launched the “Donated” Bodies of Deceased Prisoners and the Wrongfully Executed: A Pilot Project in Ethics, Law, Human Remains and Memory. The project seeks to evaluate the ethical concerns raised by the widespread US practice of disposing of executed and deceased prisoners’ remains by donating their bodies to science, medicine or archival purposes.

Jeanne Gilliard (Temple ’25), Gianna Grant (UChicago ’24) and Fiorella Villacrés LLM ’24 have worked on CRRJ’s Redressing Racist Executions project and conducted several case investigations for CRRJ’s nationally recognized research and advocacy related to racially motivated murders in the Jim Crow era.

Gilliard, a rising fourth-year political science and sociology student at Temple University, researched the case of John Gause, executed in North Carolina in 1923. “There is a noteworthy amount of exploration left surrounding the unethical donation of John Gause’s body, and it’s something that CRRJ’s own Donated Bodies project needs to uncover,” said Guilliard.

“This case is key to understanding where North Carolina fits within the practice of exploiting Black death, especially when it is so entwined with the racial injustices of the criminal legal system,” said Burnham, who attended presentations by seven of CRRJ’s interns, and provided constructive feedback for each presentation.

Additionally, Gilliard investigated a small docket of cases from Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee. She hopes to attend Northeastern University School of Law once she graduates. “This summer, I learned more about restorative justice practices and the ways in which they can deeply impact individuals and communities,” said Gilliard. “I have strengthened my understanding of Jim Crow era racial terror and its prevalence in contemporary society.”

Grant, a rising fourth year at the University of Chicago studying human rights and political science, provided restorative justice support and research for several cases from Louisiana and Georgia. Her work focused closely on the case of Edgar Scott, a 53-year-old father of four and railroad worker employed by Southern Railway, who was beaten to death on July 10, 1932, on the track near Atlanta, Georgia.

Scott’s case represents those that fall “between the cracks” — between the jurisdiction of civil rights organizations, such as the NACCP, and labor unionizing efforts emerging at the at the beginning of the 20th century, said Burnham.

Villacrés, a Northeastern Law LLM student from Ecuador, worked on CLEAR’s City of Boston Reparations Project and its Federal Reparations Project. She spent much of her summer developing a comprehensive history of Boston’s discriminatory public housing. Her research will be central to CRRJ and CLEAR’s contributions to the ongoing work by the City of Boston’s Reparations Task Force.

Villacrés said that conversations on race are often not as public or prominent in Ecuador as they are in the US. “I realize that there is much to change back home, and I am committed to contributing to those changes. During my time here, I hope to have contributed as much as I can to the project and utilized the tools and knowledge I have acquired at Northeastern Law to make a meaningful impact,” she said.

Halle Snell (Vassar ’25) a rising senior studying political science and prison studies at Vassar College, has spent nine weeks building files on 18 cases of racially motivated homicides in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia from 1930. At the end of her internship, Snell presented her work on a subset of cases that fall outside the scope of the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. These focus on the lynchings of indigenous Latino, Asian, Black and white victims from 1885 to 1965.

“The ultimate goal of this project was to find incidents where the federal government knew about possible federal law violations but refused to protect the victims,” Snell explained. “I was drawn to CRRJ’s work because I believe that the gaps in America’s historical narrative concerning racial violence must be rectified. By contributing to CRRJ’s research, I hope to bring light to the stories of individuals whose lives were taken from them and learn how to facilitate restorative justice in a meaningful way.”

Upon graduation, Snell plans to attend law school and pursue a career as a public defender, civil rights lawyer or immigration lawyer.

Kaitlyn Dehais ’26, a rising 2L student in the JD program at Northeastern Law, has spent the summer researching and reviewing cases for the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. Dehais is currently the secretary of Northeastern’s Criminal Law Association and an associate editor of the Northeastern University Law Review. “I was drawn to work with the CRRJ because of my background in peace studies and my interest in civil rights and criminal law,” she said.

Dahm Lee ’26, a 2L student in the JD program at Northeastern Law, who is a native of South Korea, has conducted research regarding intersectional identities in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, and provided support for posthumous exonerations work. Lee believes that her work on posthumous exonerations will help her hone her legal skills and achieve her ambitions to become a prosecutor in the international criminal court.

Takiyah Gabby Watson (Vassar ’27), a rising political science and Africana studies sophomore at Vassar College, has researched cases involving railroad workers and those where executions resulted from rape charges. Upon the conclusion of her internship, Watson presented the case of Will “Willie” Harvey, a 29-year-old firefighter for the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad from Vicksburg, Mississippi, who was killed in a drive-by shooting on May 22, 1932.

“I now better understand what it means to work in restorative justice, and the different ways that restorative justice can be accomplished,” said Watson.

Julia Parham (Bates ’25) a rising senior at Bates College, studying psychology and politics, supported CRRJ’s Racial Redress and Reparations Lab and researched cases from Miami, Florida, most notably that of James Jerome “Cracker” Johnson.

Johnson, who was unable to read or write, became a cabin boy on a freighter in Savannah and he landed in Florida for the first time at the age of 21. His first solo business was in the production of moonshine in 1899. Johnson grew his fortune during the late 1910s and 1920s and continued to run Bolita games, an early form of lottery, long after the end of prohibition in 1933. He then used his illegally earned fortune to invest in property and other legitimate businesses. Most of his property empire was in the Black neighborhoods of West Palm Beach. It was reported that Johnson was wealthy enough to loan the city of West Palm Beach $50,000 after the housing market collapsed during the Great Depression.

It was outside his restaurant, the Florida Bar Cocktail Lounge and Grill, that Johnson was shot and killed on July 2, 1946.

“This summer, I have developed an understanding of the legal frameworks, practices and research skills required to work in the field of restorative justice,” said Parham. “Investigating cases from the Jim Crow era provides me with a different outlook on harm, and the ways researchers can start to repair it through truth-telling,” she said. Parham hopes her time at CRRJ will provide greater clarity on whether she will pursue a career in law after graduating.

Kayla Scott, a former high school US history teacher and 2L student at Howard University Law, worked with Sara Merlo, CRRJ’s education consultant, preparing documents and lesson plans based on case information from the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. It is hoped that this lesson series will bring the archive and the cases therein to history AP classrooms in North Carolina this fall.

CLEAR’s “Donated” Bodies of Deceased Prisoners project was supported this summer by Meredith Gottliebson ’25, Kehinde Ilegbusi CSSH ’26 and Kristal Yee ’26.

This summer, Gottliebson has worked with Professor Burnham and Professor Manjapra in investigating the legal and historical landscape regarding the disposition of the remains of incarcerated people and ­unclaimed decedents. “We have gathered and analyzed state laws governing procedures for interring or donating unclaimed human remains and the remains of people who have been executed or died while incarcerated,” she said. “This has entailed research on instances of the mishandling of human remains and research into state anatomical boards, which are in charge of distributing donated or unclaimed human bodies to medical schools for education and research.”

“My passion for using research tools to reimagine disadvantaged communities, torn apart by oppressive socio-legal systems, drew my attention to the work at CRRJ and CLEAR,” said Ilegbusi, a master’s student in Northeastern University’s Department of History. “I have deepened my knowledge on reparatory justice systems through an interdisciplinary lens, and collaborated with concerned institutions to offer interventions that inspire healing in descendant communities.”

Northeastern Law LLM students Aby Chapin LLM ’26, Lucy Cotto LLM ’26, Henry Meyer LLM ’26 and Sharon Ng’ang’a LLM ’24 have worked with Ramirez, focusing on the Gun Liability Project and collaborating to draft a potential law review article proposing that insurance companies, or third-party agencies, should screen potential gun owners and use premiums and fees to compensate victims of gun violence.

“Coming from Kenya,” said Ng’ang’a, “I have witnessed firsthand the challenges and impacts of gun violence on communities. These experiences have deeply influenced my commitment to understanding and improving public safety. By participating in the Gun Liability Project, I have gained a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding gun legislation and liability in the US, and thus enhanced my knowledge of criminal justice to bring valuable insights back to my home country.”

Katrina Makayan (CAMD ’24) has spent her summer developing CLEAR’s media strategy, helping to draw local and national attention to the Gun Liability and Jail-to-Jobs projects. Makayan is also the senior program associate at the Asian Business Empowerment Council at The Boston Foundation.

Katherine Kelly ’26, Michel Ange- Siaba CSSH ’28, Abina Nepal ’26 and Brianna Johnson are assisting Professor Ramirez with the expansion of the CJTF’s Jail-to-Jobs Pipeline program, which seeks to integrate justice-involved individuals into the workforce, addressing both the labor shortage and recidivism challenges. They will work with Community Justice Centers across Massachusetts to assist those with criminal records obtain employment.

Deborah A. Jackson, CLEAR’s managing director, expressed her appreciation for the work of the interns and summer students who, through their tremendous efforts, have greatly expanded the case investigations and contributed to other significant projects. Jackson said, “Their work, like those of all the other students who have passed through our center, continue to make significant contributions to the correction of the historical record of anti-Black violence, and ensure that the voices of these victims are no longer unheard or overlooked, but preserved in perpetuity with a view towards restorative justice.”

About the Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR)

Worldwide, recent attention on the role of law and legal systems in creating and perpetuating seemingly intractable racial inequalities and disparities provide an opportunity to create real change. At Northeastern Law, the Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR) brings together our pioneering programs and faculty — long engaged in theoretical and translational research, innovative pedagogy and collaborations with external communities — to address today’s challenges and provide tomorrow’s solutions for the nation’s most complex social challenges. As one of the law school’s five Centers of Excellence, CLEAR offers an interdisciplinary convening space for faculty and students across the university who want to have an impact on these issues.