Ronald Sullivan

Former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez has new lawyers for his upcoming double murder trial in Boston, a team led by the Florida attorney who represented Casey Anthony — who was accused of killing her toddler daughter — and a Harvard Law School professor who represents the family of an alleged Muslim terrorist shot by police...Joining Baez in representing Hernandez — who is already serving a life without parole sentence for the murder of Odin L. Lloyd in 2013 — will be Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law professor who has represented the family of Usaama Rahim after the 26-year-old man was shot in Roslindale during a confrontation with Boston Police and Joint Terrorism Task Force members. Sullivan is also widely respected in the legal community for creating the Conviction Review Unit in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. In that unit, prosecutors try to identify wrongful convictions instead of leaving it to the defense attorneys to take the first step.

Approximately 20,000 people behind bars in the United States have been wrongfully convicted. One in 25 defendants sentenced to death is later shown to be innocent. These shocking statistics are from the National Registry of Exonerations and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...The American justice system is not afraid to take a long, hard look at itself and do something about it. Case in point: the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson...Ronald Sullivan, Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard, said that Ken Thompson really has started a national movement. Sullivan said if you look at the Brooklyn data in terms of both exonerations, and in terms of the number of conviction integrity units around the country, it really has awakened the nation.

The masters of Harvard’s 12 undergraduate residential Houses have unanimously agreed to change their title, a term that some students criticize as associated with slavery and has come under scrutiny as debates about racism take hold of college campuses nationwide. ... Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr., a master of Winthrop House, called the change “the product of many years” of discussion, but said House masters collectively made the decision to change it in the past few weeks. That decision came in response to student requests and recent College and national protests over issues of race on college campuses, he said. “We cannot ignore the fact that the term ‘master’ has a particular salience in our culture given the very real brutal history of slavery,” Sullivan said. “A new term that appreciates the realities of the work we do in the 21st century is much more appropriate.”

When someone placed strips of black tape over the faces of black professors’ portraits at Harvard Law School on Thursday, many people were appalled. But Derecka Purnell, a black law student, said she wasn’t surprised. Purnell and other students of color said racism — intentional or otherwise — occurs frequently on campus. But unfortunately, they said, it often takes something as egregious as the tape incident for others to notice. “What’s happens is, it’s not public and ... it typically stays among the group that’s impacted,” Purcell, a second-year student from St. Louis...Law professor Ronald Sullivan Jr., whose portrait was among those defaced, said that in his 25 years as a student at the law school and now a professor and a housemaster, he could not recall any act that was as “boorish” as this. “To say that there is unfair treatment is not to say that these places were absolutely horrible and the experiences of black students were always intolerable,” Sullivan said in a telephone interview. “It is to say, however, that with all the progress we’ve seen, there are still areas that need to be addressed.”

As you’ve likely heard, a group of Harvard students have been holding protests for the past few weeks, both in solidarity with students at the University of Missouri, and to make their own demands. Among them, they want the law school seal changed because the current image is derived from the family crest of an 18th-century slaveholder, Isaac Royall, Jr., whose estate funded the first professorship there. Now, Harvard is looking into what appears to be an incident of racially motivated vandalism overnight. Black tape was placed over the faces of the portraits of some of the law school’s black faculty. Among the defaced portraits was that of Harvard Law professor Ron Sullivan, also the director of the school’s criminal justice institute.

Black slashes of tape appeared across the portraits of some African-American professors at Harvard Law School on Thursday morning, outraging students and faculty members and touching off a day of discussion about racial injustice at the school. In a statement, the school’s dean, Martha Minow, said that the portraits, which appeared on walls inside the building, had been “defaced” and that the Harvard University Police Department was investigating the incident as a hate crime. “This is my portrait at Harvard Law School,” wrote Professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., on his Twitter account, along with a photograph of his portrait, with a wide piece of gaffer’s tape placed diagonally across his face...“I woke up to a bunch of texts,” said Kyle Strickland, the president of the law school’s student body. “As a black student, it was extremely offensive. And I know the investigation’s ongoing; we’ll see what happened, but to me it seemed like a pretty clear act of intolerance, racism.”

Harvard University police are investigating a possible hate crime at the law school after someone covered portraits of black faculty members in tape, according to university officials. Some photographs, housed in Wasserstein Hall on the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus, were defaced with strips of black tape and discovered Thursday morning...Harvard Law School students quickly rallied in solidarity with their professors. A.J. Clayborne, who will graduate in 2016, told CNN that the response on campus was "fairly overwhelming" and that students "are shocked." He said that students met to organize in light of the incident..."There has been an outpouring of warm wishes for the affected faculty from Harvard Law students, some of whom posted signed messages of support," said Dr. Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a professor of constitutional law at the school, in a statement to CNN. "I am so proud of the students for reacting with love and kindness, for showing leadership, and for valuing inclusion."..."I was shocked to see portraits of black faculty members defaced today in an apparent response to the peaceful protest organized by Harvard's black students on yesterday," said Dr. Ronald Sullivan Jr., who is the director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute. "My shock and dismay, however, were replaced with joy and admiration when I saw the lovely notes of affirmation and appreciation that Harvard law students placed on our portraits."

Harvard Law School Professor Ron Sullivan, Former Middlesex Assistant DA Brad Bailey and Former Massachusetts Bar Association President Marsha Kazarosian talk the war on drugs and prison releases.

Senator Elizabeth Warren embraced the Black Lives Matter protest movement in a forceful speech in Boston on Sunday, calling on police departments to train their officers in the de-escalation of violence and to outfit them with body cameras...Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School who has written about Black Lives Matter, said he is not surprised Warren embraced the movement. But he said her rhetoric stands out. “Politicians have shied away from acknowledging the Black Lives Matter movement,” he said, noting that the same was true of the civil rights movement.

The number of Ohioans dying from fatal heroin overdoses has quadrupled since 2008. While addicts have more paths to treatment, state leaders and local prosecutors have begun to go after the epidemic’s source: the drug dealers. Dealers could face lengthy prison terms. But there are legal questions....For Harvard Law School Professor Ronald Sullivan, charging a drug dealer with murder raises concerns. Sullivan said these “drug delivery resulting in death” laws often don’t meet the criminal liability requirements: guilty act, intent and causation. “Is it reasonably foreseeable that everyone who takes or ingests cocaine or heroin, is it reasonably foreseeable that they will die of an overdose? And that’s a question that the fact-finder and the judge in the case will have to wrestle with," Sullivan said.

An op-ed by Ronald Sullivan Jr. The meme “All Lives Matter” is yet another effort to undermine legitimate calls to end antiblack police practices that characterize far too many interactions between police and citizens of color. Covered with a veneer of neutral and inclusive language, this mantra cleverly hides an intent to silence those who insist that police treat black citizens justly. Perhaps the cry “All Lives Matter’’ would register as genuine if police unions expressed the same opprobrium when a fellow officer kills a person of color as they do when an officer is killed. But this rarely happens. Instead, police unions tend either to support or remain deafeningly silent when their own misbehave.

Immediately after the police and the F.B.I. on Tuesday shot and killed a black Muslim man who had been under surveillance for possible terrorism, law enforcement officials moved quickly to share information with civic and religious leaders, hoping to quell any potential unrest....At a news conference on Thursday afternoon, Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law School professor, said he was representing the Rahim family. He said he was concerned that the police appeared to have had no surveillance warrants. But he said the family was grateful for the chance to see the video before it became public, which they did Thursday evening.

The family of the man killed by investigators in a Roslindale parking lot as he allegedly wielded a knife called on Thursday for a “complete and transparent investigation,” including asking whether officers exceeded their authority in stopping him. Harvard law professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., speaking on behalf of Usaama Rahim’s relatives, said family members had seen no behavior to suggest that the 26-year-old had embraced extremism. Sullivan said Rahim’s family, who stood in the parking lot where Rahim died, had reached no conclusions about what happened Tuesday and pledged to “enter into a joint relationship with investigators to get to the truth.”

It’s another town reaching its breaking point as the Gray family lays their 25 year old son Freddie to rest. Upon a mysterious death following an arrest, the City of Baltimore is crying out for justice; some lashing out with violence. Attorney and President of the NAACP’s Boston Branch Michael Curry joins law professor and director of Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute Ronald Sullivan. Together, they hash out the root causes of many of the recent backlashes, plus the systemic change necessary to bring peace.

...Defense attorneys began their case by telling jurors no punishment could ever equal the pain that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev caused to others. But, they said, a quick death might well be letting Tsarnaev off easier than making him spend decades locked away, forgotten and thinking about what he did. They showed jurors a picture of the supermax prison where Tsarnaev would serve a life sentence. Ron Sullivan: This was a very aggressive start by the defense to say, this is a serious, scary place, and to many, it's even worse than death. [Tovia] Smith: Harvard Law professor Ron Sullivan says Tsarnaev's lawyers were especially shrewd, suggesting to jurors that Tsarnaev himself may prefer to be a martyr, even though all signs suggest he's fully cooperating with his attorney's efforts to save his life.

Citing a rise in wrongful-conviction claims by inmates, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is launching a unit of veteran prosecutors to review the integrity of past convictions, joining a small but growing number of prosecutorial agencies around the country devoting resources to identify innocent prisoners...Forgoing an antagonistic view toward the defense has worked well for prosecutors in Brooklyn’s conviction review unit, said Ron Sullivan, a Harvard law professor who designed and implemented the unit, which has helped exonerate 13 people since it began in 2014...A big part of putting the unit in place, Sullivan said, was creating a new ethos in the office and reinforcing the “notion of prosecutors doing justice instead of trying to get convictions.”

Robin Steinberg, a New York public defender who was initially disinvited in February as an honoree of a separate Law School event, addressed her connection to a controversial online video that some say endorsed killing white police officers in retribution for police violence against black men at a Harvard Law School lecture Friday...The decision to revoke Steinberg’s honor prompted outcry from some in the Law School community, and Professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., who directs the Criminal Justice Institute, said it was “a very unfortunate episode that occurred [there].”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted of 30 charges in the Boston Marathon bombing trial and may now face the death penalty. Harvard Law School professor Ron Sullivan offers analysis.

...On Wednesday, Tsarnaev was found guilty of all 30 counts against him..."It will give some sense of closure for people," said Ronald Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law professor and director of the school's criminal justice institute. "Healing is a more difficult concept."