The Criminal Appeals Program (CAP) is an NCJRL initiative at The University of Mississippi School of Law that not only offers appellate training to Ole Miss law students, but also offers continuing legal education in this field of practice to the bar and judiciary. The Criminal Appeals Clinic is designed to satisfy the need for highly specialized appellate advocacy skills, giving third-year law students practical experience in the area of criminal law and procedure by being admitted to the limited practice of law and representing indigent persons in cases through special appointment as counsel of record by the state appellate courts. It also provides students with classroom instruction on the essential components of criminal appellate practice, including review of trial documents and transcripts, development of the facts, evaluation and research of legal issues, the advanced “fact-centered” method of brief writing, and skills in the presentation of oral arguments.

The CAP has also published a special symposium issue of the Mississippi Law Journal (75 Miss. L.J. 645-915), which contains a model training program for other law schools to emulate and adopt. The main focus of the symposium is the “nuts and bolts” of creating and maintaining a criminal appeals clinic in order to provide this highly specialized course of study in appellate skills to as many upper-level law students as possible across the country.

In the past five years, nine students who participated in the Criminal Appeals Clinic have been appointed to clerkships with the Mississippi Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals of Mississippi, and the United States District Courts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Additionally, other students have went on to serve in the Mississippi Attorney General Office’s Criminal Appellate Division, the Shelby County (TN) Public Defender’s Office, and the Charleston (SC) Public Defenders Office.