66: Is Incrementalism Enough to Fix the Criminal Legal System w/Jeff Blackburn

Can people incarcerated afford to wait for small, gradual change? What happens to the people incarcerated if the system breaks? What is the right balance between the needs of the current case vs the needs of the future case? How do Public Defenders counter the decades long strategy of the Conservative legal movement with their own strategy?

All these questions, and more, are pondered by Hunter and his guest today, Jeff Blackburn. During his career, Jeff worked as a criminal defense attorney, impact litigation lawyer and helped to found and operate the Texas Innocence Project. Through it all, Jeff’s aimed to foster and execute a strategic vision for indigent defense and civil liberties that counter’s the work of prosecutors and police. In his eyes, public defenders and other justice minded individuals are in the conflict business and the must learn to value the future battles as much as the current ones. To fail to do so will leave them fighting a battle against an enemy that already made the fight unwinnable, but what is the right balance?

Hopefully, this discussion and the myriad of questions that arise from it will spark your own thinking about how to move towards more strategic levels of thinking.

Guest:

Jeff Blackburn, Criminal defense and Impact attorney, Co-Founder, Texas Innocence Project

Key Takeaways:

• Jeff’s career [8:30]
• What is impact litigation [16:24]
• Victory in the Tulia Case and the Lesson’s learned from it [17:20]
• The Texas Innocence Project [21:54]
• Impacts of the Tim Cole Case [26:00]
• Learning strategy from the history NAACP Legal Fund [28:30]
• Countering the Conservative Legal Movement [33:38]
• Is Incrementalism Enough [38:30]
• How to balance current case vs future case [46:00]
• The structural/historical obstacles in many state [53:20]
• What happens if the system breaks [57:40]
• Is education the way to solve this [1:01:00]
• The case for hope [1:10:00]

Resources:

Tulia Case:

https://www.aclu.org/other/racist-arrests-tulia-texas

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2002-04-19/85638/

https://www.myplainview.com/news/article/5-million-settlement-reached-in-Tulia-lawsuit-8757623.php

https://www.salon.com/2003/04/09/tulia_2/

Tim Cole’s Case

https://innocenceproject.org/cases/timothy-cole/

Jeff Calling out Dallas’ Wrongful Conviction Issues

https://innocenceproject.org/deconstructing-dallas-the-county-with-more-dna-exonerations-than-any-other/

Why Jeff Left the Innocence Project

https://www.sacurrent.com/news/texas-innocence-project-founder-quits-accuses-colleagues-of-selling-out-2440927

More of Jeff’s Work

austinchronicle.com/news/2008-04-04/608555/

Contact Hunter Parnell:

[email protected]

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