After Shot

• Author: Angela Morris
• Pages: 16-18

The Docket

EDITED BY KEVIN DAVIS / KEVIN.DAVIS@AMERICANBAR.ORG

After Shot

A spate of mass shootings

has prompted bar associations

to o er pro bono services

to survivors and victims’ families

By Angela Morris

Family law attorney Rene Stu hr Dukes,

a woman of faith, believes G od put her at

her computer the moment her local bar

association sent an emai l seeking volun-

teers to help surv ivors and families of vic-

tims of a mass shooting in her home cit y

of Charleston, South Ca rolina.

The email arrive d several weeks after the June 17,

2015, killings at Emanuel Af rican Methodist Episcopal

Church, which is known a s Mother Emanuel. The

Charleston County Ba r Association had created a com-

mittee to help surv ivors and victims’ familie s, and it

sought lawyers to handle probate a nd family law matters

as well as other legal need s that could emerge.

Dukes, who regula rly takes on pro bono cases, was eat-

ing lunch at her desk when the email landed, and she

wrote back w ithin fi ve minutes, agreeing to assist w ith

a family law matter. That speedy re sponse led her to the

most meaningfu l case of her career, which still makes

her tear up three year s later.

Dukes, a nonequity member at Rosen Hagood , helped

a woman with an urg ent, complicated child custody

matter that took her and her legal a ssistant 300 pro bono

hours to resolve in a yearlong battle. “It was such a bless -

ing. They were amazing people,” she says about her client

and family.

The Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49, was one

of the nine victims k illed inside the church by a self-

described white supremac ist—since convicted of federal

hate crimes and sentenced t o death. Middleton-Doctor

had four daughters. Af ter her funeral, her ex-husband

took custody of their t wo youngest, ages 13 and 11 at the

time. Dukes represented t he girls’ maternal aunt, with

whom the girls preferred to live . She was able to per-

suade a judge to give custo dy of the girls to the aunt

despite the law favoring biological parents in such m at-

ters as long as they’re deemed fi t.

It was a sad situation, but Dukes says she found mea n-

ing in helping the client’s family and playing a par t in

their healing by car rying the burden of their legal matter.

Dukes credits the C harleston County Bar Association

for creating a pro bono program for Mother Emanuel’s

survivors a nd the victims’ families. “I wi sh we didn’t have

to have these pro bono organizat ions,” she says.

THE LEGAL AFTERMATH

A wide array of legal issue s arise for survivors and vic-

tims’ family members in t he wake of mass shootings.

Probate matters are c ommon—easier when the victim

had a will, a nd harder with young or low-income adults

who commonly don’t have them. When parents are kil led

or debilitated by injury, they need lawyer s to sort out

child custody or gua rdianship matters. People impacted

by mass shootings can ge t government crime victim

Waltrina Middleton, ri ght, cousin of shootin g victim the Rev. DePayne

Middleton-Doctor, embraces Claudia Lawton inside Charleston’s his-

toric Emanuel Afric an Methodist Episc opal Church, where a gu nman

took the lives of nine peo ple in 2015.

PHOTO BY DAVID GOLDMAN-POOL/GETTY IMAGES

National

Pulse

16 || ABA JOURNAL MARCH 2019