Photographs by John Soares
Case Unclosed
In Northeastern Law’s Legal Skills in Social Context program, first-year students are doing real legal work for real families — and discovering how much the justice system leaves undone.
BY TOMAS WEBER
On an icy afternoon in December 1993, Louis David Brown, a tenth grader from Dorchester, Massachusetts, was strolling toward an MBTA station when a .45-caliber bullet struck him in the back of his head. He carried a wrapped gift for the Teens Against Gang Violence holiday party. The boy — who devoted his free time to campaigning against the violence endemic in his community, who dreamed of becoming the country’s first Black president — lay slain on the sidewalk three days before Christmas, caught in the middle of a gunfight.
The tragedy made headlines, and the papers swarmed with speculation. Was Louis in a gang? Was he involved in a drug deal gone wrong? It was only when the media finally gathered Louis had been a “good kid” that public opinion shifted.
After Clementina Chéry, Louis’ mother, identified her son’s body, she left the hospital with nothing but overwhelming grief: no counseling, no information about her rights, no knowledge about why her son was gunned down in broad daylight. Back home, she found her thoughts turning to other victims of violence. Did Louis only matter, she wondered, because he’d been a “good kid”?
Driven by Louis’ death and her painful own experience, Chéry, who is also a chaplain with a doctorate in ministry, set out to help other family members of murder victims, known as survivors, to heal. She scoured the newspapers for local homicides, contacting reporters and reaching out to affected families, offering them emotional and practical support. Eventually, the district attorney began sending survivors of trauma to her.
In 1994, she founded the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute in Dorchester to support communities impacted by murder, trauma and loss. What started out as emergency response for survivors quickly evolved into a movement of people fighting for the rights of the bereaved and the traumatized, a citywide tide lifting up survivors and pushing for change. “Our main focus,” says Chéry, “is to transform society’s response to homicide while cultivating cycles of peace.”
Thousands of families across the state have benefited. The institute’s annual Mother’s Day Walk for Peace has grown to become one of the largest organized walks in New England.
Professor Andrew Haile teaches in Northeastern Law’s Legal Skills in Social Context (LSSC) program, which introduces first-year students to core legal skills through collaborating with public service organizations on social justice research projects.
“For years, I’d been aware of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute’s extraordinary work,” says Haile, who lives down the street from the institute with his family.
What, Haile wondered, could law students bring to the table?
Justice Reimagined
In 2022, Haile encouraged Chéry and the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute to partner with the LSSC program. That September, Chéry arrived at Northeastern Law and shared her story with Haile and 15 LSSC students. Then she explained the task she had in mind for them.
“The prosecutors are not on our side,” she told the students. She wanted them to review and analyze the investigation into Louis’ murder. “They tell us this is a crime against the state. But Louis was my child. It takes the humanity out.”
Photograph by John Soares
The students didn’t just issue reports. Their work turned into action.
For the students, in their second week of school, it seemed like a monumental task.
“Clementina placed her trust in us,” says Julia Canney ’25, now an assistant attorney general in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. “She said, ‘I know you can do this, and I know you can do it with care.’ Still, it felt like an enormous responsibility. At the same time, it represented why so many of us came to Northeastern: to get that individual, person-based level of engagement.”
In the aftermath of her son’s death, Chéry hadn’t given much thought to the question of who pulled the trigger. “I didn’t want to focus on who killed Louis Brown,” she says. “I wanted people to know who Louis Brown was.”
In 1997, Charles Bogues pled guilty to killing Louis, in exchange for the dropping of federal charges, but later insisted he did not shoot the fatal bullet. After developing a close relationship with Bogues’ mother, Doris, who volunteered at the institute, Chéry, too, came to believe they’d convicted the wrong man.
She brought that belief with her when she sat down with Haile’s students.
Photograph by John Soares
For years I’d been aware of the institute’s extraordinary work. What could law students bring to the table?
In the LSSC program, teams of students are known as law offices. Haile split his law office into two groups. One group probed ballistics reports, maps, witness statements and police interviews. They interviewed Bogues, out on parole after 16 years in prison, and discovered several deficiencies in the investigation that led to his arrest and guilty plea. They hung flyers around Dorchester and cold-called anybody who might have information. What they found was shocking.
Police had made crucial missteps in the investigation that led to Bogues’ arrest. A .45-caliber cartridge was found in an alley two days after the murder. The prosecution presented misleading ballistics testimony to the grand jury. Witness descriptions of the shooter did not match Bogues’ appearance. Due to these investigatory failings, the students’ 51-page report concluded, the identity of the shooter “appears unknowable.”
Although the investigative report did not provide a final answer to who shot Louis, it helped support Bogues’ claim of innocence — and for Canney, it reshaped her idea of what justice could look like. “At first, we wondered whether Bogues thought he was going to get exonerated from our work, or perhaps a grant of clemency,” she says. “But through conversations with him and with Clementina, it became clear that it was more important to him that someone believed him and was taking an interest in his case.”
The other half of Haile’s student law office tackled policy issues, interviewing survivors to understand what they needed from the system but weren’t getting. Both groups presented their reports in the spring of 2023 as part of the LSSC program’s annual presentations of findings by the law offices. (Typically, at least a dozen law offices research and present on a wide range of legal issues.) The presentation by Haile’s group was attended by nearly 200 people, including community members, survivors and their families. The students’ recommendations — which included notifying survivors about their rights and ensuring law enforcement keeps families regularly informed about cases — have become a central pillar of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute’s policy work.
“It went above and beyond my expectations,” says Chéry. “The students didn’t just issue reports. Their work turned into action. Northeastern is the first university that isn’t looking at us just as a project. It’s a partnership.”
Rethinking Assumptions
Since then, the ongoing collaboration has deepened, with students taking on fresh projects every year. Topics have included Massachusetts’ compensation scheme for victims of violent crime and the impact of unsolved homicides on surviving family members. LSSC’s work on this project has twice been featured in regional media outlets. In 2025, Haile and Chéry asked students to research an often-overlooked yet critical topic: the position of family members of victims in the aftermath of wrongful convictions.
Photograph by John Soares
Clementina placed her trust in us. She said, “I know you can do this, and I know you can do it with care.”
“The state’s interests are oftentimes aligned with vindicating the rights of surviving loved ones,” says Haile. “But there is no actual legal representation for the survivor within that landscape.”
Before enrolling at Northeastern Law, Haley La ’28 worked at a district attorney’s office. The LSSC experience made her reconsider her views about the system, alerting her to the ways in which prosecutors sometimes fail to heed the voices of survivors and the impact that failure has on families. “You come in with a very narrow viewpoint,” says La, who had not previously questioned the way her DA’s office approached murder cases. “Then you hear from people who were let down, in a lot of ways, and it’s a real wake-up call.”
Most law students, says Haile, experience a similar shifting of assumptions — regardless of their previous experience or opinions on the justice system. “We don’t spend much time talking about the family members of homicide victims in criminal law,” he explains. “It’s a real challenge for students to try to center the survivor perspective.”
“When someone who was wrongly convicted has been let out of prison after many years, you’re so happy for them,” says La. “But you don’t think about the effect that has on the family of the victim.” The LSSC students interviewed several survivors who’d been in that excruciating position. “Our research found that wrongful convictions and subsequent exonerations can be incredibly retraumatizing events for the people who survived the original crime,” says Lindsay Kuser ’28.
Photograph by John Soares
You come in with a very narrow viewpoint. Then you hear from people who were let down, and it’s a real wake-up call.
The student law office team found that communication breakdowns between survivors and district attorneys were troublingly commonplace. They interviewed Massachusetts psychiatrist Amy Banks, whose father was murdered in New Orleans in 1979. Isaac Knapper, 16 at the time of the killing, was convicted and served 13 years in the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, before his full exoneration in 1991. But Banks did not learn about the exoneration until 12 years after Knapper’s release.
Another survivor learned that her brother’s killer was up for a parole hearing — not through any official notification but from a video on Facebook.
Along with tailored communication processes, and more access to information, students found what survivors wanted more than anything was an apology for getting it wrong. Students recommended changing the law to force a case review when a conviction is vacated, as well as improved communication processes and giving survivors face-to-face time with prosecutors when a case is thrown out.
During the presentation of the report this March at Northeastern to more than 100 community members, when LSSC student Sarah Joseph ’28 announced a recommendation for mandatory public apologies from district attorneys for wrongful convictions, the auditorium erupted in applause.
LSSC first-year law students answered questions during the community presentation, highlighting the challenges faced by survivors impacted by wrongful convictions. Students also provided recommendations for improvement.
Photograph by John Soares
“It’s so empowering to think about how our work might help change things. But building relationships with survivors has already transformed the way I think about the criminal justice system,” says La. “When you hear a story where a family had a good working relationship with an attorney and that made all the difference, you think: ‘Maybe I can be that person.’”
About the Author
Tomas Weber is a freelance reporter based in London, England.
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