JusticeText expands to Tulsa with latest partnership with Still She Rises
Posted August 12, 2021
JusticeText is excited to announce our newest partnership with Still She Rises, a holistic defense organization based in Tulsa, Oklahoma that caters to the unique needs of justice-involved women. The organization is comprised of attorneys, investigators, client advocates, and resource specialists who collectively work to defend their clients and disrupt the cyclical nature of incarceration.
Still She Rises supplements their legal defense work with broader efforts to address the root causes of women's incarceration - through direct referrals to substance abuse treatment, mental health counseling, and child care services. Since its founding in 2016, the organization has represented over 1,700 women in Tulsa.
"There is a tremendous freedom in direct representation of individual clients, [...] they're our boss. They decide what's best for them, they're the experts in what's best for them and [...] what they want their goal to be in our representation," said Kristina Saleh, the Program Director of Still She Rises. "My job is to see how close to that goal I can get, but also to have the freedom to not judge other people [...], but to look at somebody and just be able to take them for who they are."
JusticeText spoke with four investigators at Still She Rises - Shiva Musapeta, LaNitria Turner, Jordan Gayle, and Julie Shelton - to learn about their experiences using JusticeText to advocate for their clients.
Turner, the Investigation Practice Supervisor, indicated that police body camera footage can be "gold" for her cases but managing the high volume of video is challenging.
"If I don’t transcribe a body camera, I’ve seen situations in which someone might misstate or misquote what actually happened. That’s why JusticeText is a really incredible tool," she explained.
Shelton, an investigator, noted how JusticeText "was built with criminal justice media in mind because reviewing video discovery takes an extensive amount of time.” He continued to share that using JusticeText “lessens the workload and allows us to do multiple tasks at once".
As a former public defender, Saleh is intimately aware of the time constraints that the overburdened justice system demands of its indigent defense attorneys. Yet, she knows with a product like JusticeText she and her team will be able to fully analyze digital evidence.
"We want to do anything that we can do to find a way to make [our team's] lives easier while we are trying to achieve our goal of providing excellent representation. We are aiming for excellence. That's why JusticeText stood out to us, because it's so practical and addresses such a crucial need in the discovery process."
If you are an attorney looking to make sense of high volumes of audiovisual discovery, there are many ways in which you can utilize JusticeText to streamline your pre-trial preparation process. Reach out today to learn about how you can get started with JusticeText.
