Pamela Metzger Reimagines the Criminal Justice System

My name is Joshua Bevill.  I'm serving my 14th year of a 30-year federal prison sentence for a low-level, nonviolent offense.  In federal prison, I've spent the last 14 years immersed in every facet of federal sentencing law.  I spend my days helping other inmates pinpoint and articulate legal arguments.  Sadly, prisoners don't have a right to an attorney during the post-conviction stage and most cannot afford $100 in prison commissary much less thousands for an attorney.  So I help them.  And through The Justice Project, we help connect them to an attorney.

The Justice Project also showcases my blogs and articles.  In them, I write about  the men and women who selflessly devote their lives to helping prisoners.

And that brings me to Pamela Metzger.

The push to improve our criminal legal system has come from all corners of society, from those who have served time themselves to the attorneys and judges who have fought to create more justice within the justice system. One of the dedicated fighters on the frontlines of criminal justice reform is Pamela Metzger, Director of the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at SMU Dedman School of Law and a nationally recognized expert on the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and criminal legal ethics.

The center is a hub of independent research and development of educational opportunities that focus on issues ranging from wrongful convictions to over-incarceration. The goal of Metzger and her team is to promote the fair, ethical and compassionate treatment of people involved in every stage of the criminal justice process.

The seed of Metzger’s passion and dedication to criminal justice reform was planted in her childhood.

Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World

Metzger grew up the oldest of three children raised in a Reform Jewish household in Atlanta, Georgia. She has stated that Judaism’s emphasis on social justice played a profound role in her decision to pursue a career that focuses on the Jewish concept of tikkun olam: repairing the world.

Metzger has referred to her younger self as an idealistic teenager who thought becoming a public defender was the noblest pursuit. With newfound passion in hand, Metzger left Atlanta for Dartmouth college and quickly became involved in the social activism scene on campus. She soon found herself serving as a crisis intervention worker at a local battered women’s shelter and even spent one winter living in a shanty town as part of a divestment campaign. 

After graduation, Metzger spent a year in Massachusetts working as the Assistant to the Chief Counsel of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the statewide public defender organization. Her experience here confirmed her desire to attend law school, and she soon headed to New York University School of Law.

Once she finished her studies at NYU, Metzger briefly worked at the Federal Defender’s Office in New York City. She describes this time in her career as challenging and often heartbreaking, but also wonderful. It was here that Metzger could put her energy into giving voice to the poor. She loved her clients and the important work she was doing. 

After a brief stint in private practice, Metzger found her first teaching job as a visitor at  Washington & Lee. There she taught criminal procedure and directed the Alderson Legal Assistance Project, a clinic serving the legal needs of women incarcerated at the federal facility in Alderson, West Virginia. Metzger was thrilled with the work she was doing, and yet she and her family longed for a more urban environment and one with a significant Jewish community. 

Metzger found her dream position in 2001 when she joined Tulane’s law faculty as Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Law Clinic. In addition to directing the clinic, she taught an Advanced Criminal Practice seminar and Constitutional Criminal Procedure.

At Tulane, Metzger found diverse caseloads that challenged her lawyering skills. She would spend most of her time lecturing and teaching defense attorneys and prosecutors about battered women charged with crimes, and about the collateral consequences of their arrest or conviction.

But Metzger’s biggest challenge, one that would change the course of her career, was about to make landfall.

Hurricane Katrina

National tragedies have a way of bringing people together. They also tend to thrust unsuspecting heroes into the spotlight. Metzger would soon find herself capturing attention for her round-the-clock work to help 8,000 indigent defendants left incarcerated without legal representation after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.  

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall, over 6500 men, women and children were locked in the sprawling Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) complex. Forty-eight hours before the storm hit, prison officials cut inmate lines, which meant the inmates lost all connection to the outside world. As the storm drew closer, police continued to make arrests, some for serious crimes like rape and murder, and others for petty offenses like trespassing and public intoxication. And all the while, the inmates’ families were packing up their belongings and fleeing the city for safety.

As the storm hit and the waters began to rise, the OPP evacuated all of the inmates to state and parish jails and prisons across the state. The inmates were evacuated quickly and without any of their legal documents, personal papers or meaningful identification. 

One group of prisoners vanished almost entirely. They were poor people who had been arrested but not yet formally charged. They were, in other words, living in some hellish limbo.  The truth is, even before Katrina devastated New Orleans, poor precharged detainees would often languish in jail for weeks - not formally charged but not free either. 

When Katrina began its approach, Metzger and her family were fleeing the city. She knew little of the prisoners’ plight but watched in horror as shocking images of prisoners sitting in the broiling sun on the 1-10 overpass or being rowed to safety in small boats flashed across her television. 

Metzger and her team at the Tulane Criminal Law Clinic functioned as best they could, searching for their clients on Red Cross lists and evacuee postings. They contacted the family members of their incarcerated clients and confirmed their whereabouts. In Metzger’s mind, she had done all she could do.

Two months later her phone rang. It was Chief Judge Calvin Johnson of the Orleans Parish Criminal Court appointing the Tulane Criminal Law Clinic, and the Loyola Criminal Law Clinic, to represent all indigent pretrial detainees who were charged with crimes in Orleans Parish on claims of ineffective assistance of counsel.

For the next several months, Metzger and her colleagues would work on behalf of ‘Katrina’s unknown prisoners.’ No one had any idea who exactly their clients were or just how many of them needed help. The team rolled up their proverbial sleeves and got to work, often making trips to remote parish prisons to interview and triage detainees.

To Metzger’s horror, many of the detainees were illegally detained, held long past their lawful release dates. How could it be that almost a year after Katrina, jails were still housing prisoners so completely forgotten no one even knew they were in prison? 

Metzger and her team spent 16 months working tirelessly to find and release these lost prisoners. At the end of their campaign, thousands of people who were unrepresented and overdetained were free once again. 

It was an experience that would change Metzger forever. While she knew there were things about the criminal justice system that needed fixing, Katrina laid bare the ugly underbelly of our broken system and shed light on the gross conflicts of interest that were commonplace.

Reimagining the Criminal Justice System

As if the hurricane and news coverage wasn’t enough of a spotlight, the civil rights attorney portrayed in the 2010-2013 HBO series “Treme” was a composite character based on Metzger and two of her colleagues.

“I saw one episode and couldn’t watch anymore, it was too painful,” Metzger has said. “But personally, the work I did after Katrina represents the finest work I’ve ever been able to do. To have been given the chance to completely reimagine a criminal justice system – how many times does that happen? If you’re lucky, you get such a calling once in a lifetime. With the Deason Center, I feel like I’ve been given that chance twice – and I’m immensely grateful.”

The work Metzger and her students do at the Deason Center focuses on the disconnect between constitutional doctrine and real-world practices. Part of the work her team has done to improve the criminal justice system is to explore how a data-driven systems approach to high-risk practices can improve the implementation of public defense services. Metzger has also secured millions of dollars in funding for the Deason Center to conduct innovative research and amplify compelling stories that promote criminal legal reform.

“We are passionate about the work the Deason Center will be doing to help families within our community and across the nation,” said Doug Deason, director of the Deason Foundation. “We are confident that Professor Metzger’s experiences and commitment to criminal justice reform will provide the leadership needed to help find innovative solutions.”