Still She Rises provides criminal and civil legal services to mothers in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We interviewed three Still She Rises staff members for the 2022 Black Public Defender Association Conference on their experiences using JusticeText in a recent "stand your ground" case.
LaNitria Turner is the Investigation Practice Supervisor at Still She Rises. LaNitria is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and got her start in criminal defense at the state of Mississippi’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel in 2011.
Maryam Adamu is a criminal defense attorney at Still She Rises. She previously worked as a policy researcher at the Center for American Progress and served as a Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow in Pittsburgh. Maryam is from Pine Bluff, Arkansas; she received her J.D. from the NYU School of Law and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.
Jordan is an investigator at Still She Rises. He previously served as a Program Fellow at George Kaiser Family Foundation. Jordan received a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Morehouse College and is a Tulsa native.
LaNitria Turner always knew that public service would be an essential ingredient in her career. Working with lawyers wasn’t on her radar until a family member referred her to colleagues at an appeals court in Mississippi, and she ultimately secured a full-time paralegal position at the Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel in Jackson. Though law was not initially the career she planned to pursue, LaNitria came to discover such a passion for public defense that she’s worked in the field ever since.
Today, she works at Still She Rises in Tulsa, Oklahoma — the first holistic defense office dedicated to the representation of mothers in the criminal justice system. LaNitria was drawn to this office because of its holistic perspective. Still She Rises places its legal work in the broader social, emotional, and political context of the Tulsa community, providing the comprehensive support their clients need to lead stable lives.
The advent of body-cams and dash-cams has provided the defense bar more insight into police encounters than ever before. According to attorney Maryam Adamu, public defenders previously had to rely on written police reports when interpreting police interactions with their clients. These reports, however, did not always communicate the full picture of what transpired between an officer and their client. The prevalence of digital data now allows defense attorneys to challenge the legality of certain stops, impeach officers whose stories change over time, and present alternative narratives to support their clients’ claims.
Leveraging this newly available evidence to promote accountability for law enforcement has historically been painstaking, manual, and time-consuming. Being forced to focus on individual words and phrases distracts from the bigger, more important questions. Did the officer have probable cause to search the vehicle? Was the client advised of their Miranda rights when being taken into custody? Is the tone of the interaction reflected in the officer’s written report? These crucial questions, which have significant impacts on case outcomes, cannot be carefully considered when you’re investing hours in ensuring you have accurately recorded every word in the video.
LaNitria said JusticeText “cuts the time [to analyze evidence] in half.” The web-based platform uses artificial intelligence to automatically generate transcripts of uploaded evidence. From there, users like LaNitria create clips of important sections and annotate important exchanges for review by other attorneys and legal support staff. These time savings are helping Still She Rises focus on the analytical questions that drive favorable client outcomes.
"Before JusticeText, when I needed a transcript, it was painstaking watching and rewatching 30 seconds at a time."
The Still She Rises team recently used JusticeText to have a second-degree murder charge dismissed for one of their indigent clients. In the early morning, a woman began fighting with her partner, and the disagreement got so heated that she kicked him out of the house. He returned shortly thereafter, threatening to break down the door and enter the residence by force. The woman ended up shooting a gun through the door to protect herself, and the bullets struck the partner in the head. He died shortly thereafter.
The case involved upwards of 20 hours of body-cam footage from all of the officers on scene, in addition to dozens of hours of police interrogations and jail calls. All of this evidence was ultimately uploaded to JusticeText. The team used the resulting output to create transcripts that aided the court's review of the body-worn cameras and subsequent legal ruling.
Maryam, LaNitria, and Jordan from Still She Rises told JusticeText that the transcripts allowed them to find exactly what they needed and to “reread the narrative of what happened.” They noted that the transcripts and video evidence were ultimately crucial in helping to establish that their client feared for her life — a claim that bolstered the strength of their self-defense claim.
Maryam also used the transcript from JusticeText to directly dispute a statement made by the prosecution during a private meeting in the judge’s chambers. “It was authoritative to say, ‘That didn’t happen,’ and then the judge didn’t end up buying what the state was saying happened. That was really cool.”
“When you’re focused on getting the words right, you miss the broader context. JusticeText frees up creative space when you’re an investigator and allows you to be intuitive,” LaNitria shared with our team. JusticeText is proud to support the indigent defense work of Still She Rises in Tulsa, and we hope they continue getting the evidence they need to promote equity and accountability in local policing.
"It was so helpful to just be able to search the transcript in real-time during a meeting with the judge, find the right time-stamp, and cue the video to the exact portion that supports the argument we were trying to make."
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.