An Advocate: A passion for justice led her to career in law

Carol Turowski was 11 when she decided that she wanted to be a lawyer.

Her older brother, Steven, was picked up by police in New York and taken in for questioning about a stolen bicycle.

He wasn't a suspect, but the fact he was taken into custody angered Turowski, who demanded that police let him go.

The police did release him, but he had to ride his bicycle five miles back home from the precinct.

Her parents didn't know anything about the criminal-justice system. They didn't know who to call or how to get help.

Turowski said she realized that there were many people who were like her parents.

"They're sort of trapped by the system," Turowski said. "They can't help themselves as others might be able to. I sort of have an incredible sensitivity to folks who feel trapped by the system."

That passion for helping people has propelled Turowski to where she is today. She is a co-director of Wake Forest University School of Law's Innocence and Justice Clinic. The clinic allows law students to review and investigate innocence claims sent to Wake Forest from the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, a nonprofit group in Durham that oversees the innocence projects at seven schools in the state.

The idea for the clinic came out of the wrongful conviction of Darryl Hunt, who spent nearly 19 years in prison for the 1984 murder of Deborah Sykes, a copy editor at The Sentinel, a now-defunct afternoon newspaper.

After Hunt's exoneration, former District Attorney Tom Keith, who retired in November, asked the Forsyth County Bar Association to review innocence claims made by inmates. The association later asked the law school to recruit students to help review those claims.

In December 2008, the law school started the Innocence and Justice Clinic, with Turowski and Mark Rabil, who represented Hunt, hired as co-directors.

"She brought a lot of passion to it and a lot of knowledge about the issues of wrongful convictions," Rabil said. "She could hit the ground running. She has very good organizational skills. Unlike me, she already knew about how to work in academia."

Turowski has a wide range of experience as a lawyer and a teacher. She spent seven years as an attorney for the Legal Aid Society's criminal-defense division in Queens, N.Y., where she grew up. And she has taught and helped run law clinics at the law schools at Hofstra and Case Western Reserve universities.

In 2005, she moved to Charlotte, where she worked at a nonprofit legal-services group specializing in helping people who were fighting foreclosure. A year later, she came to Winston-Salem to work as an adjunct professor at Wake Forest University School of Law.

She also started work at the Legal Aid Society of Northwest North Carolina, helping people facing foreclosure.

Then the opportunity to help lead the Innocence and Justice Clinic opened up. The position, Turowski said, combines her passion for justice and for being an advocate.

Last month, the clinic scored a major victory, when Caitlin Torney and Emile Thompson, third-year law students, found an error in sentencing that shaved time off for a man in prison for armed robbery. It was the first time that work from the clinic had resulted in a reduced sentence.

Marchello Bitting had been sentenced to 10 years for armed robbery and wasn't scheduled to be released until 2012. But Torney and Thompson found that Bitting was not on probation at the time of the crime. Court officials had believed that Bitting had been on probation in South Carolina, which led to a higher sentence.

Bitting was released last month after a judge granted a motion for appropriate relief filed by District Attorney Jim O'Neill.

Turowski was in the courtroom that day, watching Bitting's family. She imagined that at times they had felt much like she and her family did years ago, when her brother was picked up by police.

mhewlett@wsjournal.com


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About Carol Turowski

• Age: 48.

• Hometown/birthplace: Ozone Park, Queens, N.Y.

• Education: Bachelor of arts in urban legal studies, City University of New York, City College; juris doctor, City University of New York School of Law; master of arts
in teaching, Columbia University, Teachers College.

• Experience: attorney with the Legal Aid Society, criminal-defense division, Queens, N.Y.; director of consumer-protection program at Legal Services of Southern Piedmont; director of fair-lending and foreclosure-prevention project, Legal Aid Society of Northwest North Carolina.

Taught at Hostra University School of Law, Case Reserve University School of Law, and served as adjunct professor at Wake Forest University School of Law before becoming co-director of the school's Innocence and Justice Clinic.

• Family: Married to Kevin McGuckin. Daughter, Caroline, 8.

• Quote/philosophy: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." — the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.