Pepperdine's Sudreau Global Justice Institute

Many have asked, “Why are you and Sally in Uganda?” While the short answer is, “for Scott’s work,” there is a longer answer that requires some background, so please bear with me.

4 years ago, I started volunteering with the Pepperdine Law School Sudreau Global Justice Institute. Pepperdine Law School and the Institute have worked with the Ugandan government on various projects related to justice system training and capacity-building for about 15 years. At the time I first connected, Pepperdine was helping the Uganda Judiciary implement “plea bargaining” in Uganda.

For you non-lawyers, plea bargaining is a way for people charged with crimes to resolve their cases without going all the way through trial. Sometimes it is a guilty plea to the charged crime, but with a reduced sentence. Sometimes it is a reduction in charges. Essentially a plea bargain is any negotiated resolution that saves the risk and expense of trial.

Plea bargaining has critics. Some say it doesn’t hold offenders accountable for what they actually did. Others say that it doesn’t consider victims enough. Still others complain that the criminal justice system shouldn’t negotiate, like in a flea market, over such important matters. But here is the stark reality … 90-95% of all criminal cases in the US resolve by way of “plea bargain” or some manner of pretrial resolution. If we didn’t plea bargain in the US, the criminal justice system would grind to a noisy and messy halt because we can’t try every case within the constitutionally mandated speedy trial period. That speedy trial thing is important.

Uganda has a well-established criminal justice system. They have scores of dedicated police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, etc. They have trials, although different than ones in the US. What Uganda doesn’t have is a “speedy trial” rule. If you are arrested in Uganda and taken into custody to await trial – on remand as they call it – you could be there for weeks, months or even years. You could wait for witnesses to show up. You could wait for a prosecutor to come to court. You could wait for the next court session, which may be dependent on next year’s budget. You could wait for a new judge to arrive, your missing police file to turn up or for money for fuel so the jailers can bring you to Court. But there is no rule that cases must move forward and no legal consequences if they don’t.

While there might be no legal consequences to these delays, there are some obvious human consequences. Remandees who sit in custody for months or years lose their livelihoods, land, family relationships and hope. Victims and witnesses wait so long for their cases to be heard that they just give up and decide not to testify. Communities don’t get the accountability or closure that could ensure healing and reconciliation. Ironically, by the time cases do get to trial, memories have faded and witnesses have disappeared, making convictions became more difficult. Some remandees would sit in prison for years, only to be acquitted. And the prisons were full beyond capacity, at great financial cost to Uganda.

Around 2014, Uganda began grappling with these issues and decided that plea bargaining was a practice that might help resolve cases and decrease prison overcrowding. It would give remandees an option to resolve their cases without waiting for a trial. Because of our existing partnership, Pepperdine was invited to participate in this discussion.

In 2016, after much deliberation, study and pilot programs, Uganda authorized plea bargaining. Then came the real challenge – how to add a completely new and unfamiliar layer to a criminal system with multiple levels of courts, scores of jurisdictions in all corners of the country and over 100 prisons. How could Uganda ensure that remandees were treated fairly? Would the accused get counsel or would they be left to negotiate on their own? How would the judiciary ensure consistent resolutions and sentences in a nation as big as Uganda? How long would it take to train stakeholders? Would anyone actually take advantage of this new option?

Again, Pepperdine partnered in this task. Pepperdine Law School summer interns (law students), and legal fellows (recent law school graduates) who had been coming to Uganda every year, began focusing on this project. Uganda hosted twice-yearly “Prison Projects” where law students and volunteer US lawyers and judges travel to Uganda, at their expense, to work with their Ugandan counterparts on plea bargaining. This group travels to prisons around Uganda to negotiate and resolve as many cases as possible within the Uganda rules for plea bargaining. The aim is not only to resolve cases but to introduce and support plea bargaining as a resolution option.

In 2018, I came to Uganda for a Prison Project. It was amazing, challenging and rewarding. We sat on the grass in prison yards in rural Uganda and talked to remandees one by one, with their Ugandan lawyers and law students. We looked at police files and negotiated with prosecutors. We argued, cajoled and disagreed, as lawyers do. Some remandees pled guilty. Some had their charges reduced. A few had their cases dismissed because of issues that the teams discovered. Several had been in prison for so long that they had served more time than they would have received after trial so they were released that very day. Others opted to take their chances at trial.

In 2019, I came back. I came again in 2020, barely making it out before the Entebbe airport closed for 9 months. So, when Pepperdine began looking for a lawyer to come to Uganda for a longer term to develop and expand the program to additional courts and into Rwanda, I think they realized they were going to have a hard time getting rid of me and offered me a job.

My title is “Director – East Africa Programs” which is a very fancy way of saying that I chase my talented Ugandan staff around, encourage them and try to stay out of their way as the program grows. I help manage Pepperdine legal interns who come every summer. I host international lawyers and judges on Prison Projects (you, yes YOU could be one of them!). And I spend a lot of time in Ugandan prisons, courts, police stations, prosecutor offices and government buildings as we reach more clients at every level of the Ugandan legal system.

So that is the “what.” Over the course of the next few months, we will tell some amazing stories about the “why.” Looking forward to telling those stories.