Who says you have to wait until graduation to begin changing lives for the better? Definitely not our students in the School of Law.

Mary Kelly Tate, a clinical professor of law and director of Richmond Law’s Institute for Actual Innocence, would agree.

Since 2014, her students have logged hundreds of hours researching the facts of the case and the details of federal sentencing law for a client whose case they sent for review by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.

Tate recently received news that their client, Dujuan Farrow, is a step closer to freedom after being one of 209 people who received a commutation of his life sentence from President Obama on the day his clemency was signed.

“Under today’s sentencing guidelines, Mr. Farrow would have received nothing close to life in prison,” Tate explained in a press release. “I am elated that President Obama has chosen to right this unjustly harsh sentence.”

Tate is quick to share that her law students' commitment and professionalism with this case over two years made achieving this positive result for their client possible.