Research
My research engages questions about public accountability by examining the investigation and prosecution of police officers accused of misconduct.
My dissertation, The Rarity of Police Prosecution: Prosecutors, the Law, and Police Misconduct, explores prosecutorial decision-making in context of the investigation and prosecution of police officers. While the public increasingly demands prosecution of police officers following allegations of misconduct, indictments and convictions rarely occur.
My dissertation explains the rarity of police prosecution through an analysis of the law and the experiences, perspectives, and broader organizational contexts faced by prosecutors responsible for handling these cases. I show that the likelihood of indictment and prosecution even for clear cases of police misconduct remains a rare occurrence as the result of deferential and ostensibly settled law, the social architecture of intra-office contexts, and tempered political positionings.
Drawing on in-depth interviews in 5 field sites across the nation, I consider how prosecutors and other legal professionals working in the domain of police suspect investigations manage and make sense of their positioning as legal practitioners, elected politicians, and employees working in complex hierarchical organizations.
My larger research agenda builds upon my time living, learning, and practicing within the St. Louis legal community in the wake of Michael Brown’s death.
One of my papers, “Youth at the Center: A Timeline Approach to the Challenges Facing Black Children,” published in the Saint Louis University Law Journal, advances a novel typology entitled a “timeline approach to incarceration” which indicates the notable and unequal increases in the likelihood that Black Americans will come into contact with the criminal legal system virtually at all points throughout their lives. The timeline approach demonstrates that micro-choices at a macro-level discredit any assertion of a post-racial America and call into question foundational tenets of American jurisprudence.
I also engage in applied policy scholarship.
Under the auspices of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and in the wake of Officer Jason Van Dyke’s killing of Laquan McDonald, I submitted a comparative analysis of United States Federal Judicial Consent Decrees to the Illinois Attorney General.
This report included an examination of four consent decrees from around the nation to offer guidance regarding the specific provisions that should be included in accountability processes in Chicago.
