LSU Law Class of 2023 graduate John Arboleda.
A few weeks before wrapping up his time at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center and celebrating graduation with his classmates, John Arboleda got one last chance to use the advocacy skills he’s honed at LSU Law over the past three years to successfully defend a client in the courtroom as part of his work in the Juvenile Defense Clinic.
Arboleda’s client was facing charges of illegal possession of a firearm and controlled substance, which resulted from a search of their person. The search was conducted during a traffic stop, in which police alleged the driver failed to obey a stop sign and Arboleda’s client was a passenger in the vehicle.
Dashcam footage of the traffic stop, search, and arrest existed, but Arboleda hadn’t seen it and was told it might not be made available to him until the day of the trial, pending release by the state prosecutor’s office. Using all the available evidence, Arboleda and classmates in the Juvenile Defense Clinic assisting him with the case developed several potential defense strategies while they awaited to hear about the dashcam footage. An hour before the trial was set to begin on April 24, Arboleda was notified the footage had been released by the state prosecutor.
“Everything I had planned for got thrown out the window,” said Arboleda, who scrambled to review the footage to see how it would effect his courtroom strategy.
Luckily for Arboleda, the dashcam footage bolstered his defense strategy, as it appeared to show that the driver of the vehicle had come to a complete stop at the stop sign, making the traffic stop and subsequent search unwarranted. Arboleda regrouped, entered court, and argued that the evidence against his client was not constitutionally obtained. The court agreed, and the case was dismissed.
“It didn’t really hit me until we got out of the courtroom and my client’s mom was crying,” recalled Arboleda, who was one of eight students in the Juvenile Defense Clinic in the spring semester. “That’s not an experience a lot of people get in law school, to actually be an integral part of something that actually affects someone’s entire life.”
Open to second- and third-year students at LSU Law, the Juvenile Defense Clinic is an intensive, live-client representation experience in which third-year students defend local clients in juvenile court delinquency proceedings and second-year students assist with representation. LSU Law students in the clinic study and work under the supervision of Professor Jack Harrison and Adjunct Professor Lakita Leonard, who also serves as assistant public defender for the Office of the Public Defender in East Baton Rouge Parish.
“The students get to experience all the different types of events and issues that come up in representing somebody,” said Harrison, a 2004 LSU Law graduate who has 14 years of experience as a juvenile defender for the East Baton Rouge Office of the Public Defender. “And they are very analogous to what a criminal defense attorney does. It’s just abbreviated. Our students can function on a par with practicing attorneys. They are very capable and very enthusiastic.”
