Sunday, January 19, 2025
Sunday Reflection: A Moment
Ten years ago, I had a remarkable group of students in my clemency clinic (as seems to happen every year). One of them was Charles Dolson, who had a pretty eventful life before law school as a Marine and then as a police officer for the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, where he is from. I paired him with Sara Sommervold and sent them to visit their client, Amos Scott, in the federal prison at Victorville, California, a dusty place up in the high desert north of Los Angeles. They wrote a great petition for Mr. Scott, but it languished with thousands of others.
Charles went on to earn an MBA and work in a number of positions both with the Red Lake Band and others, and currently he serves as general counsel to a number of entities. I asked him to come back on Friday to speak to and swear in the new St. Thomas clinic students, a group of about 35.
I met him down in the courtroom shortly before the ceremony. I had printed off the list of 2490 people whose sentences had just been commuted that day. Charles rifled through the list and there it was, the name he was looking for: Amos Scott.
That was a remarkable moment; that we would be together, 10 years later, waiting to talk to the next generation of people doing similar work, when that news came.
Of course, there was a lot building up to that moment, done by some of my heroes. Biden rooted his decision on his (correct) perception that Black men like Amos Scott were too often over-sentenced for narcotics, particularly crack cocaine. The most important mover in beginning and maintaining that fight was my mentor Nkechi Taifa:
Her work pushed President Obama to use clemency for people like Jason Hernandez, who became a great advocate in his own right:
And then Nkechi Taifa started working with one of my other great mentors, Dr. Joanne Braxton:
And then, somehow, I'm sitting with Charles Dolson when we find out Amos Scott will be free, because of what so many other people (including Joe Biden) have done.
Because... it takes all of us. All of us. It takes all of us to make things right.
Comments:
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Mark, great to see this happen … thanks to the hard work of the ALL that pressed this issue … you, Charles, Sara, Jason, Nkechi, Joanne, and the many law students that have worked in your clinic throughout the years. And thanks, in the end, to Joe.
# posted by 
: 6:38 AM
: 6:38 AM 
Pleased snd honored to be a part of your story, Mark. Thank you for being a North Star -- for what you have done to open a pathway to freedom for so many. Mr. Douglass must be proud! I know that I am. Thank you, too, for reminding me why we teach!
# posted by : 5:38 PM
: 5:38 PM
OMG Mark!! This is Nkechi. The role that YOU played is sooo very pivotal to the success we see today. Your bringing the authority and precedent from the President Ford clemency grants took our mass clemency for those sentenced for crack cocaine offenses who remained imprisoned because the 2010 law was not retroactive into the limelight and most importantly to the Obama White House. As I mentioned in my memoir, you were my savior, and the engine that ultimately brought this week’s clemencies into fruition!! We are all forever grateful!
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# posted by : 9:13 PM
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