Free At Last

Last Wednesday, we met 5 young men in Gulu Main Prison in northern Uganda. There was nothing especially remarkable about these men. All were wearing the yellow uniform of a remandee. All were young and poor. None spoke English and most could not even write their own name. Each one had been arrested and charged with a petty theft in early 2020, just as COVID began.

Like many remandees in Uganda in the last 24 months, these men could have been forgotten. Thankfully they were not. At least initially.

At varying points in 2020 and 2021, each of these men went before a judge and had their cases dismissed. The reasons for the dismissals varied. Some cases were dismissed because no witnesses were willing to come and testify. Other cases were found to have insufficient evidence for the State to proceed. Whatever the reasons, all 5 cases ended. All of the men should have walked out of prison that day. Which should have been the end of the story.

But it wasn't.

Inexplicably, despite all of their cases being dismissed, none of the 5 were released. Despite their pleas to anyone that would listen, the men stayed in prison. Remandees were not going to Court because of COVID. No judges or lawyers were allowed to come to this facility. So, the 5 were stuck in prison for no reason, and with no recourse.

When our team visited the prison last week, Scott and Richard, one of Pepperdine’s Ugandan advocates, were reviewing files and quickly realized these grievous errors. From there, the resolution was shockingly simple. Richard mentioned the cases to the prosecution and the judge. Everyone agreed the men should be immediately released, and they were.

Within the hour.

But consider the costs of the bureaucratic oversight, mistake, error or whatever you want to call it. Between them, the 5 men served 3,517 days in remand for crimes that were dismissed. Collectively, 9 years and 7 months of life. Life that passed without them. Life that was stolen.

These 5 cases were among 22 that were dismissed during our Prison Project last week. Most were dismissed because upon review of the evidence within the case file, even the prosecution agreed that the matters should not proceed. In fact, in some of the cases, the State erroneously charged victims or innocent bystanders. For each of the other 17, this was their first chance to see a lawyer. Like the 5 above, all were quickly released. But like the 5 above, each also spent a significant amount of time incarcerated.

Last week, a team of 10 Pepperdine Law students, 10 volunteer American lawyers and 9 Ugandan law students set up shop under tents and in plastic chairs in the grassy courtyard of Gulu Main Prison for 4 days. 3 Pepperdine staff members and I manned the “Secretariat,” our version of a clerk’s office where we assigned and tracked cases as the teams worked.

The prosecution had an “office” there under a tent with case files for hundreds of remandees and prosecutors to negotiate. 3 judges had “courtrooms” there under tents where cases were heard and concluded. It was a massive, cooperative criminal negotiation event that went to where the clients were – prison.

For a week, remandees sat in the dirt under the hot sun waiting for their name to be called so they could talk to a lawyer about their case. The women remandees, some with babies in arms, sat to the side on a tarp under a tree. All waited, as they had for months or years, for someone to listen to their story.

The goals for the week were simple. First, to serve clients and resolve cases, if possible. And we did. There are 1600 prisoners in Gulu Main, about 65% of them on “remand” or awaiting trial. We spoke to 365 of them and resolved 259 cases. This includes plea bargains and dismissals.

But the point of the week was not just to resolve cases. The real goal is to train and model advocacy, negotiation and pretrial resolution for Ugandan lawyers and judges. Plea bargaining is fairly new in Uganda. Until 2016, there was not even a real option to plead guilty. Every case went to trial, a process that could take a decade or more. So, at the end of the week, a new batch of Ugandan lawyers and judges understood better how they might justly resolve matters without the need of trial.

A “bonus” goal of the week is that by participating in this process and working with Ugandans, the US lawyers and law students learned invaluable lessons as well. How to advocate zealously but while also respecting cultural differences. How Uganda measures accountability and justice compared to America. How to evaluate a case, counsel clients and deal with both elation and frustration. One of the US lawyers indicated that she did more “lawyering” this week than she had her whole career thus far.

Our work concluded Friday midday, which was also when a massive storm blew in. During the 3 hour downpour, the power cord for our printer and laptops slowly disappeared into a small lake. We pulled our tables and case files away from the tent edges to keep them dry. Eventually, we walked through the mud and quietly out the front gate of the prison as the remandees stood under the eaves of their cell blocks trying to stay dry. We could not even have the traditional celebratory soccer match with the remandees to say farewell.

Despite the rain and the fatigue, the team stood in the entry foyer of the prison waiting to depart. The students were talking and joking around, clearly encouraged by what was accomplished. We were surrounded by the unique noises of a Ugandan prison, the sounds of chopping wood (for the prison kitchen stoves), noisy livestock in the prison farm and the rhythmic clicking of guards unloading their machine guns and removing bullets from their magazines one by one, counting them as they turned them in to the prison armory at the end of their shift.

As we waited our turn to depart, an older man in civilian clothes came in escorted by guards. His blue pants were soaking wet and muddy as was the small plastic bag he carried. Despite his surprisingly stylish sunglasses, this man seemed overwhelmed and despondent. He shuffled slowly by our group, hunched and looking down. I noticed that he was handcuffed.

I watched as the guard removed his handcuffs and had the man kneel on the muddy floor and open his bag. The contents were a small basket and an eye patch. To that he added his sunglasses – all of his possessions. After handing the bag and his “charge sheet” to the guard, the interior door opened and the man entered the prison for the first time, a new remandee.

The metal prison door clanged shut behind us, representing the end of a short chapter for our team as we walked to our bus to eventually be reunited with our lives, jobs, families and homes.

As the metal door clanged shut behind him, it represented different things - difficulty, uncertainty and separation.

I look forward to when that door opens again. For both of us.