Newswise — No matter how much they do to make a new life after serving time, most convicted felons never recover from the smudge on their reputations. Every time they apply for a job, apply for higher education or try to vote, past mistakes come back to haunt them.
Thanks to the efforts of three former University of Mississippi law students and their professor, a young Pascagoula man is making a new life with a clean record.
Two months ago, the Court of Appeals of Mississippi reversed Zacharia Dambrell's 2002 conviction for attempted armed robbery and rendered the case, meaning it will not be retried and will be wiped from his record. On future applications for college courses and jobs, Dambrell, 21, can truthfully state that he is not a convicted felon.
"I do feel that I have a second chance in life," said Dambrell, who credits fledgling attorneys Frank Hartley, Stephanie Case and Alicia Kutch and UM law professor Phillip Broadhead for performing a miracle.
"Y'all will never know how for the rest of my life how much I appreciate what y'all did," said Dambrell's mother, registered nurse Ethel Oldham of Pascagoula. "There are not enough words for me to express it." In spring 2003, Broadhead picked Dambrell's case as an assignment for his Criminal Appeals Clinic in the UM School of Law. Hartley, who wrote the appeal brief for the class, drew Dambrell's case randomly but he said the facts immediately drew him in.
"Our argument centered around what is an attempted armed robbery," said Hartley, who works for an Atlanta law firm. "This did not fit the state's definition."
Dambrell had been convicted of attempted armed robbery of a convenience store for an incident that happened just a few days after he turned 17 in May 2000.
The law students argued that Dambrell never threatened the store clerk or asked for money " that he didn't attempt to rob anyone at all. Instead, court records show he threw down a kitchen knife he was carrying and ran away without ever speaking to the clerk.
The store clerk testified at Dambrell's trial in Jackson County Circuit Court that he didn't even see the knife on the floor until after the teen left. Still, a jury convicted Dambrell of attempted armed robbery. The trial judge, stating for the record that it appeared no crime was committed, sentenced him to the minimum required by statute: six years; three in prison and three under post-release supervision.
Although appeals briefs are based only on court records, Hartley met with Dambrell in the East Mississippi State Penitentiary in Meridian to get his story. Dambrell, who didn't know until then that anyone was looking at his case, said he tried not to get his hopes up.
"I thought about it, and I decided that if something good came of it, then that was fine, but I tried not to get too excited and just stay focused on living each day where I was," Dambrell said. "I was trying hard to keep things that way."
Based on Hartley's brief, the Mississippi Court of Appeals granted the case a hearing on Feb. 18, 2004, a rare opportunity that was almost a victory in itself, Broadhead said.
Two of Broadhead's third-year students, Stephanie Case and Alicia Kutch, picked up where Hartley left off by arguing the case in front of Mississippi Court of Appeals judges Leslie D. King, James E. Thomas and David A. Chandler. Going before the court can intimidate any lawyer, and as students, Case said she and Kutch were afraid that even after two weeks of preparation, they weren't ready.
"But according to Broadhead, if you're not scared when you go into court, either you've stopped breathing or you've stopped caring, so I guess being scared was a normal reaction," Case said.
Case and Kutch argued that since Dambrell did not approach the store clerk, display the knife in a threatening manner or demand anything from the clerk, he did not use a weapon to attempt to rob the store as defined by the statute.
On May 25, the Court of Appeals announced that the students had succeeded. Dambrell's conviction was reversed and the case was rendered.
However, Dambrell was already a free man, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections. On May 19, just days before his conviction was overturned, he was released after serving out his sentence and returned home to Pascagoula under supervision.
Still, Dambrell said he feels that the law school team helped him get his life back, perhaps an improved version. While in prison, he earned his GED and college credits. He also got in shape, losing nearly 200 pounds. Prison wasn't rosy, but Dambrell said he concentrated on working each day to make things up to his mother.
Back home, he's working to build a new and improved life. He lives in his own apartment in Pascagoula and works as a painting contractor. This fall, he plans to attend classes at Gulf Coast Community College.
"The main thing that's really changed about me is that I'm not stupid anymore," Dambrell said. "I think more about what I do before I do it."
Dambrell, who has taken a Zen-like attitude regarding his life since his arrest, said he isn't bitter that he served hard time for a stupid teenage mistake that technically was not a crime.
"I accept what happened. I'm moving on with my life and I'm not going to dwell on this," he said. "But I'm not going to forget it, either."
For more stories from the University of Mississippi, visit http://www.olemiss.edu/newsdesk
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