Guest column: Justice delayed means justice continues to be denied for the Chester Trio

Professor Cheryl Brown Wattley joined the inaugural faculty of the UNT Dallas College of Law from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where she served on the faculty from 2006 through 2013 and was Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Education. Professor Wattley teaches Criminal Law in the first-year curriculum. She also teaches the upper level courses, The Trial Process and Courtroom Advocacy. Professor Wattley serves as the Director of Experiential Education overseeing the law school’s externship program; the Community Lawyering Centers; the Joyce Ann Brown Innocence Clinic; and the law school’s Community Engagement Program. Professor Wattley graduated from Smith College, cum laude, with high honors in Sociology. She received her Juris Doctorate degree from Boston University College of Law, where she was a Martin Luther King, Jr. fellow and recipient of the Community Service Award.

Professor Wattley began her legal career as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Connecticut representing the United States in civil litigation. Through her actions, the United States participated as litigating amicus curiae in Connecticut ARC v. Thorne, the lawsuit that led to the entry of a consent decree overhauling the system for serving persons with mental retardation in Connecticut. She received a Special Achievement Award from the Department of Justice for her work. She later transferred to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas, located in Dallas, where she focused on the prosecution of white-collar crime, serving as Chief of the Economic Crime Unit. During her time in this office, Professor Wattley received another Department of Justice Special Achievement Award, the United States Postal Inspection Service National Award, and commendations from the Department of Treasury, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Customs Department. Professor Wattley then went into private litigation practice, where her work included white-collar criminal defense, civil rights litigation, federal and state criminal defense, and post-conviction proceedings. In 1995, Professor Wattley was nominated by President Bill Clinton for a federal judgeship. The late Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson sought Professor Wattley’s assistance with the writing of her autobiography. That collaboration resulted in the June 2024 publication of “Desire to Serve: The Autobiography of Eddie Bernice Johnson as told to Cheryl B. Wattley.” Professor Wattley, a founding faculty member, wrote “UNT Dallas College of Law: Daring to be Different: The First 10 Years 2014 – 2024” chronicling the efforts and contributions that created the law school.

Professor Wattley is also the author of a “A Step Toward Brown v. Board of Education: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher and Her Fight to End Segregation” published in October 2014, and winner of the 2015 Oklahoma Book Award, Non-Fiction category. Professor Wattley also authored “Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher: How A ‘Skinny Little Girl’ Took on the University of Oklahoma and Helped Pave the Road to Brown v. Board of Education.” University of Oklahoma Law Review, 62 OULR 449 (2010). She adapted her research on Sipuel Fisher into a theatrical presentation entitled “I’ll Do It” integrating original source documents from the University of Oklahoma, the NAACP, court files and newspaper articles. She contributed a chapter, “Making History: Being a NAACP Plaintiff- Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher”to the book “This Land is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma, 1870s-2010.”

Professor Wattley received Honorable Mention in the Clinical Legal Education Association Creative Writing Contest for her essay “The Tough Minded, Tender Hearted Lawyer.” Professor Wattley created a trial case file that was published by the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, “Marine Rescue Specialists (MRS) vs. Riverboat Queen (RBQ).” She has also written “Humanizing Legal Education: Bringing Clients Into the Classroom.” Professor Wattley has served on a variety of civic and professional boards and committees, including the State Bar of Texas Board of Disciplinary Appeals; District 6 Grievance Committee; Dallas Bar Foundation; and the Board of Regents for Texas Woman’s University. She was appointed to serve on “Dallas Together,” a mayoral committee appointed to address racial issues within the City of Dallas and appointed as Vice Chairperson for the 1990 and 2000 City of Dallas Redistricting Commissions.
She is a frequent speaker and panelist participating in presentations with the Dallas Women’s Leadership Symposium; Center for American and International Law; American Board of Trial Advocates; Dallas Bar Association; and other community and legal organizations. Professor Wattley has been an instructor for National Institute of Trial Advocacy, teaching in trial and deposition programs for over 30 years.

In 2024, Professor Wattley was recognized by her alma mater with the Smith College medal, an award bestowed upon alums who exemplify in their lives and work the true purpose of a liberal arts education. In 2023, she was recognized by the National Institute of Trial Advocacy with the grant of the Robert e. Oliphant Award for outstanding contribution to advocacy teaching. Her career as a trial attorney was recognized in 2021 when the Dallas Bar Association presented her its Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. Professor Wattley received the Dallas Bar Association’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award in 1994. She is also the recipient of the DaVinci Institute Fellow Award for Innovative Teaching, the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Diversity Award, the Association of Black Lawyers’ Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Award, the University of Oklahoma Regents’ Award for Superior Professional and University Service and Public Outreach, the Charlye O. Farris Award, and the Dallas Chapter of the NAACP’s President’s Award. Professor Wattley has also been included in Who’s Who in Black Dallas.

Professor Wattley continues to work with Centurion Ministries, a non-profit organization based in Princeton, New Jersey, devoted to the vindication and liberation of persons wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. Through Centurion, she served as one of the attorneys for Kerry Max Cook, a former Texas death row inmate. Professor Wattley represented Richard Miles in his release from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and ultimate exoneration. She served on the founding Board of Directors with Mr. Miles as a board member for his non-profit organization, Miles of Freedom. Her latest achievement was the exoneration of Benjamine Spencer who was declared actually innocent after thirty-seven years. She had worked on his case for over twenty-one years on this case with Centurion Ministries, seeking justice for Mr. Spencer.

Stacey Patton, PhD is an award-winning author and journalist who writes about race, politics, popular culture, child welfare issues, diversity in media, and higher education. As a nationally-recognized child advocate, Dr. Patton travels the country delivering keynotes and professional trainings focused on combating racial disparities in child abuse cases, criminal prosecutions for child abuse, foster care placements, the over prescribing of psychotropic medications to children of color in foster care, the school- and foster care-to-prison pipelines, corporal punishment in public schools, diversion and restorative justice programs. She works as an intermediary between social service and law enforcement agencies seeking to improve services to communities of color. Patton teaches journalism at Howard University in the Cathy Hughes School of Communications and is a research associate at the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. She is the author of That Mean Old Yesterday (A memoir), Spare The Kids: Why Whuppin Children Won’t Save Black America, and two forthcoming books: Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children in Jim Crow America and a children’s book Not My Cat.

Fizz Ahmed joins the Centurion Board of Directors as a marketing executive with over a decade of experience working in the technology industry. He is currently a Senior Account Executive at Google, and also the Founder and CEO of a corporate growth strategy consulting firm called Growth Theory. He is an alumnus of the NYU Stern School of Business where he specialized in Marketing, Leadership, and Change Management.

Having migrated from Bangladesh at an early age, Fizz’s formative years were spent in the greater Boston area, where he pursued his higher education at Brandeis University. It was during his undergraduate tenure that the vibrant culture of social justice prevalent at Brandeis instilled in him an unwavering commitment to extensive philanthropic endeavors, particularly focused on promoting education equity among underprivileged children. Presently, as a board member at Centurion, Fizz effectively channels his passion for social justice to drive impactful change in the community.

Jim Floyd is a life-long Princeton, NJ resident and a psychologist.  He graduated from Princeton University in 1969 with a concentration in Psychology.  Dr. Floyd attended the University of Rochester and completed his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1975.

Between 1975 and 1979 Dr. Floyd was director of the Community Readjustment Program, a free outpatient psychological service for ex-offenders in Mercer County, NJ.  He is retired from a career with the NJ State Division of Mental Health, including serving as the “psychology consultant” for the Division, and an administrator at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, Trenton, NJ.  Also, he is a licensed psychologist in NJ, has been listed in the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology, a member of the American Psychological Asso. & NJ Psychological Asso., and has had a private practice in psychology.  Between 1987-2007 he had thirteen ‘Lecturer’ faculty appointments in the Psychology Dept. of Princeton University.

Christina joined Centurion in 2021 and is the organization’s Assistant Legal Director.  In her current role, Christina: focuses on advocacy that seeks to change the laws and policies that contribute to wrongful convictions (i.e. arguing as amicus in front of the New Jersey Supreme Court); manages Centurion’s small parole advocacy caseload; and works side-by-side with Paul on Centurion’s active wrongful conviction cases.

Christina is passionate about serving communities that have been systematically marginalized under the law.  She began her career as a public defender at The Legal Aid Society’s Parole Revocation Defense Unit.  There, she represented clients at the Rikers Island Judicial Center being prosecuted for parole violations – an arcane area of criminal defense with devastating consequences.  Christina also worked as a public defender at The Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense practice where she represented clients at the Manhattan Criminal Court.  In both roles, Christina served clients who had significant mental illnesses, substance abuse issues, and were suffering from extreme poverty. And in both roles, she learned the importance of humanizing her clients during each stage of their representation.

Christina received her law degree from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.  A New Jersey native, Christina received her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University- Newark and was an Undergraduate Associate at The Eagleton Institute of Politics.  She is thrilled to be home.

Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, he was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi, law practice, squeezing in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his hobby—writing his first novel.

Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn’t have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990.

One day at the DeSoto County courthouse, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel exploring what would have happened if the girl’s father had murdered her assailants. Getting up at 5 a.m. every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading off to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988.

That might have put an end to Grisham’s hobby. However, he had already begun his next book, and it would quickly turn that hobby into a new full-time career—and spark one of publishing’s greatest success stories. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared. When he sold the film rights to The Firm to Paramount Pictures for $600,000, Grisham suddenly became a hot property among publishers, and book rights were bought by Doubleday. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991.

The successes of The Pelican Brief, which hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham’s reputation as the master of the legal thriller. Grisham’s success even renewed interest in A Time to Kill, which was republished in hardcover by Doubleday and then in paperback by Dell. This time around, it was a bestseller.

Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, Grisham has written one novel a year (his other books are The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, A Painted House, Skipping Christmas, The Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers, The Last Juror, The Broker, Playing for Pizza, The Appeal, The Associate, The Confession, The Litigators, Calico Joe, The Racketeer, Sycamore Row, Gray Mountain, Rogue Lawyer, The Whistler, Camino Island, The Rooster Bar, The Reckoning, and The Guardians) and all of them have become international bestsellers. There are currently over 300 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 40 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. The Innocent Man (October 2006) marked his first foray into non-fiction, and Ford County (November 2009) was his first short story collection.

Grisham took time off from writing for several months in 1996 to return, after a five-year hiatus, to the courtroom. He was honoring a commitment made before he had retired from the law to become a full-time writer: representing the family of a railroad brakeman killed when he was pinned between two cars. Preparing his case with the same passion and dedication as his books’ protagonists, Grisham successfully argued his clients’ case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.

When he’s not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised 8.8 million dollars for Gulf Coast relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He also keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams.

After joining Centurion in 2018, Corey transitioned to the role of Executive Director in January 2019. Corey works with Centurion’s staff, board, volunteers, and donors to grow support for our work, and build organizational capacity. She is passionate about drawing people to Centurion’s mission, and the pursuit of justice for the innocent in prison. Corey has more than 15 years of experience working for non-profits at both local and national organizations with a wide range of missions including community development, education, domestic violence prevention, and disability services. She is proud and humbled to serve the men and women that Centurion supports.  Corey lives in Lawrenceville, NJ with her husband and young daughter.