Author: Amber O'Connor

Do Good Anyway- A Lesson from Professor Willie J. Lovett, Jr. 

March 22, 1965 – January 30, 2017

By: Judge Renata D. Turner

Judge. Professor. Mentor. Leader. Friend. These are just a few of the titles proudly worn by our beloved Professor Willie Jake Lovett, Jr. I am most honored to have called him a friend first. We worked together during our nascent years as lawyers at the City of Atlanta’s Law Department. Since that time our professional and personal paths crossed and merged eventually at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School and finally at the Fulton County Juvenile Court. I can still picture his smile and bow tie as he stood in my law school office doorway. He dropped by after an event and asked what he needed to do to become an adjunct. Once he began teaching, he fell in love with it. What he loved most was mentoring students- helping them to get their footing as young lawyers and opening as many doors for them as he could. We often spoke of the talent and dedication of AJMLS students and his desire to give back, recognizing the blessings that were given to him throughout his life.

Judge Lovett was raised by his grandmother in Savannah, Georgia. He graduated from Beach High School with the highest GPA of all the high school students in Chatham County. He graduated cum laude with Distinction from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and earned his Juris Doctor from Harvard School of Law. He later earned his Master of Laws in Litigation from Emory Law School. He clerked for the Honorable Joseph W. Hatchett, former chief Judge of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, served as an Assistant City Attorney for the City of Atlanta’s Law Department, and worked as an associate at Moors, Manning & Martin, LLP, Ford & Harrison, LLP, and Troutman Sanders, LLP. For ten years, he served as the Deputy County Attorney for the Fulton of County Office of the County Attorney. He then served as the Director of the Fulton County Office of Child Attorney from 2009 to 2013. He was appointed as a Presiding Judge of the Fulton County Juvenile Court in the Atlanta Judicial Circuit in May 2013. He was affectionately known to the children in his court as the “bow tie Judge.” On the bench, Judge Lovett was known for his compassion and care for the children and families appearing before him. Off the bench, he was lauded for his dedication to improving juvenile justice. As examples, he was the lead judge for the Dually Involved Youth Initiative and served as a member for the Board of Directors for the National Association of Counsel for Children (NACC).

The list of Judge Lovett’s accomplishments, honors, professional positons, and positons of service is long but now finite. The impact that he left behind to the legal community and those of us who knew and loved him, however,  is infinite. Many of us question why his life ended so abruptly when he still had so much to give to a world desperate for his type of leadership. I like to believe that too much compassion and dedication to improving the world was concentrated in the man called Willie Lovett. Now it’s dispersed to those of us also striving to serve and improve the world around us. When doing such noble and often thankless work seems too hard, Judge Professor Mentor Leader Friend Willie Jake Lovett, Jr. gave us the inspiration to keep moving forward through the words of his favorite poem that he often tearfully recited:

 

ANYWAY

                People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;

Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;

Do well anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;

It was never between you and them anyway.

 

                                                Mother Teresa

 

Rest in peace with your God my friend.

 

Judge Renata D. Turner

Professor Rapping was recently quoted in the SundayReview, an Op-Ed in The New York Times. The article, Justice Springs Eternal, explores the current state of the American prison system. In recent years the prison population numbers have been on the decline. The article examines how that decline may be affected by President Trump and a new climate in Washington.

The article’s solution to continuing on the “decarceration” movement is activism on the part of those involved and impassioned by prison reform. In the article, Professor Rapping is quoted stating, “Eighty percent of the people charged with crimes in this country can’t afford a defense attorney. . . Until we invest in public defenders, our system cannot and will not change.”

Professor Rapping is a 2014 MacArthur Genius Fellow. At AJMLS, he teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, advanced criminal procedure, and criminal justice lawyering. Prior to joining the faculty at AJMLS,  Professor Rapping served as the Training Chief for the Orleans Public Defender and in the Public Defenders offices of Georgia and Washington, D.C., developing and implementing public defender training programs, and handling a caseload of serious felonies. Professor Rapping currently directs Gideon’s Promise. Gideon’s Promise is built on a mission to transform the criminal justice system by building a movement of public defenders who provide equal justice for marginalized communities.*

Thank you for your continued contributions to both AJMLS and the legal community, Professor Rapping.

*Taken from Gideon’s Promise.

AJMLS Associate Professor, Michael Mears, was recently quoted several times in the April edition of Atlanta Magazine. The article, Why did Georgia execute more prisoners in 2016 than any other state?, centered on the nine convicted murderers put to death in Georgia in 2016, more than any other state. This is the highest number of executions in Georgia in a calendar year since 1957.*

Professor Mears has been on the faculty at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School (“AJMLS”) since 2007. He teaches evidence, advanced evidence, criminal law, criminal procedure, and criminal law ethics. In 2003 Professor Mears was selected to be the founding Director of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council after serving for over ten years as the Director of the Multi-County County Public Defender Office, a state-wide death penalty public defender service funded by the State of Georgia. Professor Mears’ background makes him uniquely qualified to comment on the issue at hand in the Atlanta Magazine article.

The article is a worthy read and can be found here. Thank you for your continued contributions to the legal community, Professor Mears. We appreciate all of your efforts!

*Taken from Atlanta Magazine.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently published a historic new regulation that prohibits nursing homes receiving federal funds from using pre-dispute binding arbitration agreements. Pre-dispute binding arbitration agreements are usually presented to residents upon admission to the nursing home and residents are often unaware that by signing them they are giving up their rights to go to court. These agreements ban all claims by residents from being litigated in courts, including claims involving elder abuse, sexual harassment and wrongful death, among other things. The decision to ban these agreements is the first time a federal agency has ever issued a rule providing such sweeping protection of the rights of injured people to access the public courts. 

AJMLS Professor Lisa Tripp is a leading scholar in this area and CMS cited two of Professor Tripp’s articles in support of this pioneering regulation. She was also quoted in the preamble: “Tripp notes that ‘residents of nursing homes are frail and elderly people who are completely dependent on the facility and its employees for their safety and health. Thus, many residents and their families would not oppose the arbitration provision because they are fearful of antagonizing the facility.’” If you see Professor Tripp around campus, be sure to congratulate her on her accomplishment and thank her for her work on behalf of nursing home residents across the country.