RALEIGH, N.C. – Campbell Law School will play host to a meeting of the Craven-Everett American Inn of Court on Thursday, March 20 at 7:30 p.m. Judge Stuart Couch, a 1996 Campbell Law graduate and Immigration Judge in the Charlotte Immigration Court, and Jess Bravin, Supreme Court correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, will serve as the featured speakers.
Campbell Law students, faculty and staff are invited to attend the event.
In the days following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, a veteran military pilot and prosecutor, volunteered to return to active duty to help bring justice for a fellow Marine who had served as a co-pilot on United Airlines flight 175.Couch was assigned to prosecute Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was imprisoned at Guantanamo and accused of connections to the Hamburg cell that helped plan and carry out the attacks. During his first visit to the prison camp, Couch witnessed a detainee being subjected to coercive interrogation tactics that he recognized from his own experience in the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training. Nine months later, he concluded that the interrogation of Slahi violated international and domestic law and refused to prosecute him. For his actions Couch was awarded the American Bar Association’s “Minister of Justice Award” in 2007 and the German Bar Association’s “Pro Reo Award” in 2009.
Bravin has covered the post-9/11 military commissions at Guantanamo Bay since their inception in Nov. 2001, including the 2006 landmark case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. He featured Judge Couch’s story in a 2007 front-page article “The Conscience of the Colonel,” and in his recent book “The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay.”
The Craven-Everett American Inn of Court is primarily composed of members of the Wake and Durham County Bars. It was originally founded as the Braxton Craven American Inn of Court in 1993. The mission of the American Inns of Court is to foster excellence in professionalism, ethics, civility, and legal skills
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