Photo credit: Kenny Karpov/Innocence Project

This year’s event highlights the injustices which plague the U.S. incarceration system and the need for criminal legal reform. Imagine helping a woman under attack, being mis-perceived as the perpetrator, and being shot in the back by police Then you are unustly incarcerated for 19 years, only to be freed by lawyers from the Innocence Project. This is Mr. Hicks’ story, and what he did during incarceration will intrigue you.

The Consortium community and the wider public are invited to this free event on Sunday, November 5, 2023, from 3 to 6 p.m. at the School of International Service of American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20016. The event will take place in the Founders Room located in the School of International Service, located at the intersection of Nebraska Ave. NW and New Mexico Ave. NW. A full reception will follow.

Our keynote speakers will be Termaine Hicks. Mr. Hicks spent 19 years in prison responding to a woman who had been attacked. The Philadelphia police shot him three times, deliberately planted a gun on him and wrongly arrested him for the attack. The Innocence Project, a organization dedicated to criminal legal reform which uses scientific advancements to prove wrongful conviction, took on Termaine’s case in 2011 and pursued DNA testing. On December 16, 2020, Termaine’s conviction was overturned based on exculpatory DNA evidence and the realization that the officers had lied under oath at his trial. Termaine is now a national speaker against wrongful convictions, gun violence, and the challenges faced by our youth. He is also a volunteer at the Juvenile Justice Center.

The respondent is Rev. Dr. Harold Dean Trulear, Professor of Applied Theology at the Howard University School of Divinity. Dr. Trulear currently teaches Ministry and Social Justice Advocacy, Ethics and Politics, Ministry and Criminal Justice, and Church and Community Studies. He is a Certified Instructor in the Inside/Out Prisoner Education Program, and teaches in several correctional facilities. Trulear is the author of over 100 articles, book chapters, essays and published sermons. He has served as consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, as a member of the Executive Session on Community Corrections at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and as a member of the Leading with Conviction Fellows of JustLeadership USA.

The Tachmindji event is one of the premier events of the Consortium open to the wider public. It is made possible by the generous support of Ms. Diane Tachmindji of Washington, D.C.

RSVP for the event below.