The Western New England University (WNE) School of Law will host a talk by attorney Matt Segal. The talk entitled "Brady Bunched: The State's Constitutional Obligation to Disclose Evidence of Police Misconduct to Public Defenders" will be held on Monday, October 16th, at 12:00 noon as part of the Fall 2023 Clason Speaker Series. This free event will take place in the Law School Common and is open to the public.
Attorney Segal is a lead attorney representing public defenders from the Committee for Public Counsel Services and the Hampden County Lawyers for Justice in the case Graham v. District Attorney for Hampden County. The issue in this case, currently before the Massachusetts Supreme Court, is the district attorney's obligation to disclose evidence of police misconduct by Springfield police officers to accused individuals represented by public defenders. Segal will lead an in-depth discussion of this constitutional obligation first established in the Supreme Court case of Brady v. Maryland.
Attorney Segal began his career as a federal public defender and served as legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts for 11 years, where he temporarily halted President Trump's first travel ban; recognized state constitutional protection for cell phone location data; and won the dismissal of more than 61,000 wrongful drug charges in the Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan lab scandals—the single largest dismissal of wrongful convictions in U.S. history. Attorney Segal is a graduate of Yale Law School and former law clerk on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Clason Speaker Series presents expert lectures to the School of Law. The series is named after Charles R. Clason, a prominent local attorney and member of the U.S. House of Representatives, who held the position of Dean of the School of Law from 1954 to 1970. Today, the purpose of the Charles and Emma Clason Endowment Fund is to host speakers who will enhance the academic environment of the School of Law and the University.
For more information, call 413-782-1432 or email Professor Harris Freeman at hfreeman@law.wne.edu.
