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Access to Justice: Joint Efforts Between Law Students
of the Louis A. Grimes School of Law in Liberia
and the Washington & Lee School of Law
Spark Change

by the Liberia Access to Justice Practicum
Professor Speedy Rice and students [1]

The Liberia Access to Justice Practicum is a joint program at Washington and Lee School of Law ("W&L") in Lexington, Virginia and the Louis A. Grimes School of Law at the University of Liberia, and seeks to assist in the broad goal of building greater access to justice in Liberia's criminal justice system [2].

The Practicum is taught in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, along with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers [3].

During the 2008 fall semester, four law students from W&L and nine graduates and soon-to-be-graduates of Louis A. Grimes participated in the Practicum, which culminated with the W&L students' travel to Liberia to work with their Liberian counterparts. [4]

Hon. Cllr. Eva Mappy Morgan, the Deputy Minister for Administration and Public Safety at the Ministry of Justice, authorized visits by the Liberian and W&L students into Monrovia Central Prison ("MCP") and Harper Prison. These visits were arranged to document conditions of the prisons, and to interview inmates, guards, and supervisors.

The objective of the report was to identify issues faced by and in Liberia's prisons, and to provide recommendations to address those issues. It was important to include stories from both inmates and staff to demonstrate that many problems are institutional and should be addressed at that level. Overcrowding, lack of staff, and lack of running water create problems for everyone, and the students helped all parts of the prison system speak to their government with a united voice.

The completed report was submitted to Deputy Minister Morgan, the Minister of Justice, the Supreme Court Judiciary, UNODC, the Country Director of the ABA Rule of Law, the NACDL, and the Deans of both the University of Liberia School of Law and W&L Law. As a result, new processes have been instituted to process more inmates and reduce delays in court procedures.

One of the most frequent issues brought to the students' attention was the lack of fuel and transportation to get inmates to court.

In February 2009, the Ministry of Justice and Supreme Court established a program whereby Monrovia's magistrate judges began holding pretrial hearings at MCP to process the backlog of pretrial cases. The participating magisterial courts are: Monrovia City, Westpoint, Gardnersville, New Kru Town, Brewerville, and Paynesville. These hearings are currently taking place as scheduled, and are slowly processing, and where warranted, releasing prisoners.

Additionally, together with the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative and the James A.A. Pierre Judicial Institute, the Access to Justice Practicum selects and supervises twelve Liberian law students to serve as judicial clerks for each of the magistrates holding court at the prison.

The clerks work on recordkeeping, identifying prisoners for hearings, and improving communications between the courts and the prison. The program seeks to increase the number and quality of the hearings, with the ultimate goal of reducing prison overcrowding. Example activities of the clerks are: keeping records of the prison hearings; tracking cases transferred to Circuit Court to ensure that they do not get lost in the system; and ensuring that detainees are released when ordered by the court.

To be sure, the prison hearings still face obstacles that reduce their effectiveness and efficiency. Due to a lack of oversight, there is some variation in hearing procedures, and poor record-keeping creates additional confusion. However, refinement and clarification are expected steps in implementing new procedures, particularly in a country that is struggling to accomplish so much with so little.

It is also worth noting that several problems are systemic, and have simply been carried over from one court to the next. For instance, if procedural variation among magistrate judges exists in their home courts, it comes as no surprise that those variations appear in prison hearings. Similarly, solicitors and public defenders who are late or fail to appear in magistrate courts may predictably continue their behavior in the prison courts.

Despite such problems, the establishment of the prison hearings represents several steps forward. The procedure helps reduce prison overcrowding, reduce human rights violations, and raises awareness of discrepancies in court procedure. The use of law students as clerks sparks the involvement and interest of young legal minds, and begins a trend of civil service which will hopefully continue throughout their careers.

Perhaps most importantly, it demonstrates recognition by the government and judiciary that obstacles like the lack of fuel, however real, cannot be the explanation for constitutional violations, and that solutions can be found by tapping into the skills and efforts offered by all components of the legal profession.

The Liberia Access to Justice Practicum has been a learning experience for everyone involved. For the American law students, it was an exciting opportunity to learn firsthand about the kinds of problems faced by a post-conflict society's criminal justice system; for the Liberian students, it was an opportunity to learn from other people's experiences. The class studied criminal justice systems of other African nations faced with similar problems, and using this knowledge, set off to put their own house in order.

The prison visits increased comprehension of the systemic problems plaguing Liberia's criminal justice system and the recommendations, if implemented, will go a long way in alleviating some of them.

This practicum aimed at going beyond merely observing and documenting the current state of affairs in Liberia; the goal was, and is, to build greater access to justice in Liberia's criminal justice system.

The report submitted by the Practicum students is reproduced in the following sections:

1. Monrovia Central Prison: Case Studies and Recommendations
2. Monrovia Central Prison: Systemic Problems
3. Monrovia Central Prison: Conditions for Juveniles
4. Monrovia Central Prison: Report from Guards
5. Harper Prison: Conditions
6. Harper Prison: Case Studies
7. Overall Recommendations and Conclusions

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