Advocating for the Innocent: Exoneration Justice

Meet the Host: Max Gaston '13 J.D.

Max Gaston (he/him) returned to Notre Dame Law School in October 2021 as the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Gaston leads the development and implementation of strategic initiatives at the Law School that champion a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment, including proactive initiatives to support belonging, and the Law School’s mission of educating a different kind of lawyer.

Prior to Notre Dame Law School, Gaston was a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, where he litigated state and federal civil rights matters involving the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, LGBTQ+ rights, and voting rights. He led the ACLU of Florida’s ongoing litigation in The Dream Defenders v. DeSantis, seeking to hold unconstitutional the governor and legislature’s racially motivated anti-protest legislation, and successfully argued before Chief Judge Mark E. Walker in the Northern District of Florida to have the law preliminary enjoined.

Prior to that, Gaston was a litigation consultant with the Human Rights Law Network in New Delhi, India, where he advised Indian Supreme Court advocates on public interest litigation matters involving caste discrimination and the violation of constitutional rights. He is a former commercial litigation and arbitration associate with Williams Montgomery & John in Chicago, and a former state prosecutor with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.

Listen to the Episode

Presented by Notre Dame Law School

Monday, June 19, 2023 8:00 am

Exoneration justice is the tireless effort to free innocent people imprisoned after being wrongfully convicted of crimes, and to provide them with rehabilitative services. Jessa Webber ’22 J.D. and Anna McGinn ’22 J.D., Notre Dame Law School’s Bank of America Foundation Fellows, have dedicated their legal careers to this work.

The premiere episode of The DEI Podcast with Max Gaston on ThinkND, “Advocating for the Innocent: Exoneration Justice,” is part-one of a three-part series on public interest law. Max, Jessa, and Anna explore the systemic problems that have led to a backlog of wrongful convictions disproportionately of people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. They discuss what anti-racist efforts look like to reduce the frequency of wrongful convictions on the front end, and how exoneration justice is helping create a fair and equitable justice system for everyone. Jessa and Anna also discuss the public interest path in law school, and how the Bank of America Foundation Fellowship is making public interest work after law school possible.

To receive an email each time an episode is released on ThinkND, please register for free here. The DEI Podcast with Max Gaston is sponsored by Notre Dame Law School and co-sponsored on ThinkND by Black Alumni, Alumni Rainbow Community (ARC ND), YoungND, Native American Alumni, Notre Dame Women Connect, Hispanic Alumni, Notre Dame Senior Alumni, and Asian Pacific Alumni.

Meet the Speaker: Anna McGinn '22 J.D.

Anna McGinn ’22 J.D. joined the Great North Innocence Project in August 2022 as a Bank of America Foundation Fellow. In her role, she investigates and litigates claims of actual innocence.

As a student at Notre Dame Law School, Anna served on the executive editorial board of the Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies. After training to become a registered family mediator in the state of Indiana, she practiced mediation at the Law School’s Applied Mediation Clinic. Anna also worked in the expungement clinic at Notre Dame, where she completed expungement petitions on behalf of persons with criminal records for submission to local state courts.

Prior to attending law school, Anna served as an AmeriCorps member in the Minneapolis Public Schools’ truancy and credit retention and recovery program. She received her bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in 2018.

Meet the Speaker: Jessa Webber '22 J.D.

Jessa Webber ’22 J.D. recently joined the Western Michigan University-Cooley Innocence Project, where she represents wrongfully convicted individuals in Michigan. Part of her role is to help forge strong relationships with Michigan Conviction Integrity Units — divisions of prosecutor’s offices that work to prevent, identify, and remedy wrongful convictions.

At Notre Dame Law School, she was a student in the Law School’s Exoneration Justice Clinic from 2021 to 2022. She was involved with the Notre Dame Exoneration Project during all three years of law school and served as the organization’s president as a third-year law student. After graduation, she was granted one of the Law School’s Bank of America Foundation Fellowships and worked as a legal intern in the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office Conviction Integrity and Expungement Unit in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 2018.

Anna McGinn ’22 J.D., one of ND Law’s Bank of America Foundation Fellows, helps free wrongfully convicted man

Last Friday, a Minnesota man named Thomas Rhodes walked out of prison after spending nearly 25 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. A recent Notre Dame Law School graduate, Anna McGinn ’22 J.D., played a key role in the final stage of his release.

McGinn is working with the Great North Innocence Project for two years as a Bank of America Foundation Fellow — one of the public-interest legal fellowships granted each year to members of Notre Dame Law School’s graduating class.

She met her client Rhodes on Friday when he was released from Moose Lake Correctional Center in northern Minnesota. In his case, McGinn wrote the motion and memorandum in support of post-conviction relief, on the basis that the state violated Brady when it withheld exculpatory impeachment evidence from Rhodes at trial.

“I played a small role in his release, but I did assist in completing this final step of his tortuous journey.” McGinn said. “But this is not about me. It is about Tom and his family, and the absolute tragedy and miscarriage of justice.”

Rhodes’ wife drowned in 1996 while they were on a family vacation at a Minnesota lake. In 1998, he was found guilty of first- and second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, though he always maintained that his wife fell off their boat by accident during a nighttime ride. He told authorities how he jumped into the water in an attempt to save his wife, but he was unable to find her in the darkness. Witnesses corroborated his account, noting that they saw him drenched and running for help once on shore. The couple’s two sons, who were 14 and 9 at the time of the incident, have also supported their father’s assertion that the drowning was no more than a tragic accident.

The Great North Innocence Project has represented Rhodes since 2013. McGinn is one of at least eight attorneys, not to mention dozens of students from the University of Minnesota and Mitchell Hamline law schools, who have worked on the case.

The Minnesota Conviction Review Unit, a partnership between the Great North Innocence Project and the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, undertook a comprehensive review of Rhodes’ case. Investigations by the Great North team and the Conviction Review Unit found significant issues with testimony that was key to the state’s case against Rhodes in the 1990s.

Under an agreement with the prosecutor, the state district court vacated Rhodes’ first- and second-degree murder convictions. However, he will have a second-degree manslaughter conviction on his record for driving his boat in a negligent manner. The manslaughter charge would have required him to serve about two and a half years in prison — one-tenth of the amount of time he actually ended up serving.

“There are so many men like Tom out there,” McGinn said. “But I can take great comfort in knowing that Tom is playing with his six lovely grandsons, and holding his sons’ hands once again.”

McGinn expressed gratitude to Notre Dame and the Bank of America Foundation for providing her with an opportunity to do this important work.

“I wouldn’t be experiencing this joy without my education at Notre Dame Law School and the Bank of America Foundation Fellowship,” she said. “This was the greatest accomplishment of my life, and I am indebted to everyone at Notre Dame who provided me with the opportunity to use my degree to help people in this way.”

Learn more about Thomas Rhodes’ case by visiting the Great North Innocence Project’s website and by listening to the DEI Podcast with Max Gaston. This article was written by Kevin Allen and was originally published on January 19, 2023 on the Law School website.