There are a lot of guilty people in prison. And Professor David Singleton knows it.
Some of them, though, have changed and deserve a second chance, he frequently tells students in his classes at Salmon P. Chase College of Law.
And those who have changed – and have completed a significant portion of a sentence – are whom he wants to see have a second chance through a project he created: Beyond Guilt.
The strategy behind it is seemingly counterintuitive: Ask prosecutors who convicted an inmate and family members of a victim to join him in petitioning for early release, followed by connections to mentoring and social services. It is an approach that lets him teach students about both law and life. (So far, more than 37 individuals have been freed since Beyond Guilt was begun in March 2019.)
“At Chase, I teach the Constitutional Litigation Clinic [in which students represent offenders in civil rights claims], Criminal Law and occasionally Criminal Procedure. Certainly with the clinic, but also to a lesser extent in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, I try to remind students of the humanity of the people who fill our prisons and jails,” he says. “It is easy to see incarcerated people as ‘less than’ because we lack the contact with them that reminds us of their humanity. In my classes I often mention my Beyond Guilt clients and offer students the opportunity to work on a case and meet one of the human beings we represent.”
Professor Singleton launched Beyond Guilt under the umbrella of the Ohio Justice & Policy Center, where he has been executive director of the prison reform and pro bono representation initiative since before he joined the Chase faculty in 2007.
In a classic case of “one thing leads to another,” he started Beyond Guilt after working five years to free a woman who had been improperly convicted as a teenager and had spent 23 years in prison.
“After finishing the case of a lifetime, I had a ‘what next?’ moment. In some ways, I felt I had wandered from my [pre-Chase] public defender roots in handling an innocence case, since most people I proudly represented as a public defender were guilty of at least some of what the government alleged.
“Most of the incarcerated friends [of the freed woman] I got to know while representing her were not innocent like she was, but they, like her, had an abundance of humanity. So, ‘what next?’ became Beyond Guilt. I wanted to free people whom most people would just as soon write off and never let out. We must move beyond guilt (that is, the person’s crime) in order to see the individual’s humanity and potential.”
Along with having an impact on individuals, Beyond Guilt is designed to have an impact within the criminal justice system
“The United States accounts for less than five percent of the world’s population, yet it has 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. That’s sickening. And I haven’t even gotten to racial disparities yet,” Professor Singleton says. “Beyond Guilt fits into the broader issue of criminal legal system reform because in this country we are addicted to incarceration as a way to solve social problems, such as poverty, inadequate schools and lack of good jobs that pay a living wage.”
As for racial disparity: “Black people are over-represented in our criminal legal system. A disturbing statistic in that regard is the fact that one in three Black men will spend time in prison at some point in their lives, compared to one in 17 white men. And one in 18 Black women can expect to spend time in prison at some point in their lives, compared to one in 111 white women.”
And while there is no question that inmates for whom Beyond Guilt seeks early release are guilty, the overriding question is, is it worthwhile to keep someone in an overcrowded prison system who is a different person than when the prison doors slammed shut? The threshold that Beyond Guilt requires is a legally recognizable admission of guilt, a significant portion of time served, evidence of rehabilitation and, in some instances, years to mature following a crime committed as a teenager or in the early 20s.
“Beyond Guilt works to end mass incarceration not by seeking the release of people who committed low-level, non-violent crimes, but by freeing people who have committed violent crimes and have rehabilitated themselves during lengthy periods of incarceration,” Professor Singleton says.
“The reason we focus on these folks is because mass incarceration, contrary to what most people believe, is driven by the over-punishment of people convicted of violent offenses, which are often committed by young people whose brains (and impulse control) have not fully developed. It makes no sense to continue to lock people up after they no longer pose a risk, especially if they have demonstrated through their behavior and prison programming that they have changed for the better.”
The first person freed through Beyond Guilt – whom the Constitutional Litigation Clinic had represented in an unrelated matter and who had been asking Professor Singleton if there was anything he could do to help him be released – fit the years-to-think-about-it criterion perfectly. Convicted in his early 20s of manslaughter, the Cincinnati man had spent 22 years in prison when he was released in 2019, at 43 years old. Joining Professor Singleton in the petition for release was the Hamilton County (Cincinnati) chief assistant prosecutor, supported by an affidavit from the victim’s sister.
While Beyond Guilt works in the steely-edge world of prison bars, it also has an academic side. Chase students who have volunteered with the Ohio Justice & Policy Center have helped represent Beyond Guilt clients and Professor Singleton has written about the concept behind it in “Restoring Humanity by Forgetting the Past,” in the Ohio State Law Journal, and spoken on “Back-End Advocacy: Second Chances and Second Looks” at the Presidential Summit & Sentencing Symposium of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in conjunction with Georgetown University Law Center.
There are guilty people in prisons, Professor Singleton acknowledges. But some of them have shown that they deserve a second chance, he tells all who will listen.