Pursuing Justice Podcast Episode 26: As a teenager, Mark Purnell was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit. After years of self-advocacy, his case caught the attention of pro bono counsel. Hear about their dramatic fight for his exoneration.
Related Links:
National Registry of Exonerations profile of Mark Purnell
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=6318
Press Release: Milbank Wins Dismissal of Murder Conviction, Freeing Innocent Man After Nearly 16 Years in Prison
Delaware Supreme Court: Purnell v. Delaware, 254 A.3d 1053 (Del. 2021)
https://law.justia.com/cases/delaware/supreme-court/2021/113-2020.html
Delaware Innocence Project
National Innocence Project
This podcast provides a behind-the-scenes exploration of pro bono and public interest legal work. These heartening stories are told from both clients’ and lawyers’ perspectives to showcase intimate portraits of lawyers helping those with limited access to justice.
Please note: CLE is not offered for listening to this podcast, and the views and opinions expressed within represent those of the speakers and not necessarily those of PLI.
FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Tiffani D. Hurst
Tiffani D. Hurst has spent 20 years as a criminal defense attorney. During the majority of that time, she was a habeas attorney defending clients on death row. When the state death penalty was ruled unconstitutional, she entered private practice while attending Drexel University's M.S. program in Special Education with the goal of learning how to help stakeholders better navigate the Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) process. Ultimately, Tiffani sees the intersection of asset-based pedagogy, social emotional learning (SEL), and trauma-informed teaching as a way to accomplish her long-term goal of disrupting the preschool-to-prison nexus. She is currently working on a Ph.D. in education researching concrete steps that educators can take to develop and use a culturally competent lens as they implement practices and programs that will disrupt the nexus. Tiffani has a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, an M.S. in Education from Drexel University, an M.Ed. in Psychology from Springfield College, and a B.A. from Wellesley College.
Herbert W. Mondros
Herbert W. Mondros is Special Counsel at Rigrodsky Law. Mr. Mondros is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University and a magna cum laude graduate of Tulane University Law School, where he served as a member of the Tulane Law Review and was awarded the Order of the Coif. After graduating law school, Mr. Mondros entered the United States Department of Justice through the Honors Program. He served as a Trial Attorney in the Environmental Crimes Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief Appellate Counsel for the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Prior to joining Rigrodsky Law, Mr. Mondros was a litigation partner at Margolis Edelstein and a litigation associate in the Delaware office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. He has represented plaintiffs and defendants in shareholder corporate and derivative litigation, securities and consumer fraud class actions, and commercial civil litigation. Mr. Mondros routinely litigates in all of Delaware’s state and federal courts. He has an active pro bono practice, representing defendants in capital punishment cases and plaintiffs in prisoner civil rights cases. Mr. Mondros has been a member of defense teams that exonerated and freed two individuals who had been wrongfully convicted and collectively served more than 30 years on Delaware’s death row, and a third who served 38 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Mr. Mondros serves on the Board of Innocence Project Delaware, an innocence organization dedicated to the exoneration of wrongfully convicted individuals.
