The Rocky Mountain Innocence Center lawyers are working to give the wrongfully accused another chance.
The team is building a network of lawyers to build legislation that would contribute to overturning unjust convictions.
From San Antonio, Texas, Kristy Columbia graduated from the Thomas J. Cooley School of Law at Western Michigan University when she was only 23 years old.
Since then, she worked as a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, specializing in crimes against women and children at the Dallas County District Attorney’s office. This background drew her to the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center once she and her family moved to Utah.
“I was just really intrigued by the mission and purpose and returned to the workforce for this,” Columbia said.
She also believes that her former experience as a prosecutor translates directly into her role as the executive director for the RMIC.
“To me, justice is comparable to the truth and finding out the truth. And that’s really the biggest part of our job here. Investigation of these cases and litigating them is finding out the truth whether it’s favorable to our clients or not,” she said.
The legal team at the RMIC dedicates itself to preventing and correcting wrongful convictions in Utah, Nevada and Wyoming. This means they regularly engage in legal policy work, investigation and litigation.
Amanda Darcy, a legal fellow at the RMIC who graduated from the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law in 2021, explained the challenges related to their smaller team at the RMIC.
“We don’t have any support staff, we don’t even have a secretary. We don’t have a paralegal. The big one is we don’t have investigators. We do all of our own investigation,” Darcy said.
Darcy and the rest of the team all have personal connections to the work they do at the RMIC.
“I didn’t feel like I was giving back to society at all. I felt like there was a different path that I wasn’t living and I decided to take the LSAT and just see and I did and once I got into law school, I realized this is exactly where I was meant to be what I was meant to do,” Darcy said.
Paris Thomas, a current BYU law student and contributor to the RMIC, found work that spoke to him and his values through the RMIC.
“The work just resonated with me because of my experiences with the Church and our mission and my childhood because they really are looking after people who’ve been forgotten or downtrodden,” Thomas said.
Thomas is currently working on other projects related to his future career while in law school and loved his time at the RMIC.
“I know what it’s like to be deprived and so the natural progression for me was this post-conviction work at Rocky Mountain Innocence Center where you help people who’ve been wrongfully convicted,” Thomas said.
The other members of the team, Thomas Kelley and Jennifer Springer, are also experienced in the legal field.
Kelley acts as a staff attorney and graduated from the law school at the University of Utah after serving five years as an engineer officer in the U.S. Army following his graduation from West Point.
Springer is the managing attorney at the RMIC and got much of her experience from the University of Utah Innocence Clinic after graduating from the S.J. Quinney College of Law.
The professionals at the RMIC also work with the legislatures of the states they serve to help pass laws to protect the wrongfully convicted.
“RMIC was integral in getting compensation statutes passed in Utah and in Nevada,” Darcy said.
The RMIC was integral in the passage of DNA testing statutes in Utah, Nevada and Wyoming. The team also worked toward other policy advances in preservation of evidence and rules of evidence.
Most of the work Columbia does as an administrator is to ensure that the rest of the team has as much time as possible to dedicate to the wrongful conviction cases. Therefore, her work each day usually involves phone calls and emails to donors, grants and fundraisers.
Columbia also takes care to help the other members of the team to maintain a good work-life balance and atmosphere at the office.
“I understand the subject matter. There’s definitely secondary trauma involved in doing this type of work and I take those issues very, very seriously,” Columbia said.
Despite the rigors of their professions in wrongful conviction, the team members at the RMIC repeatedly expressed their passion for the work.
“My favorite part is when you knock on a door and a witness answers and they speak with you and they tell you information that is positive for your case. That is the best feeling in the world,” Darcy said.
“When I worked at Rocky Mountain Innocence Center, I found people who were like-minded and also very driven and ambitious for the right reasons and toward the right things. And it just really aligned with my goals of wanting to give back. And so I definitely see myself doing that later,” Thomas said.
The RMIC team often extends beyond their own office in Salt Lake City. Post-conviction work there often involves a network of lawyers across the West to investigate and litigate cases.
Columbia even explained that post-conviction non-profits exist across the country and maintain professional relations with one another.
“If you were going to spend your summers on the East Coast and you really wanted to do work like this we could set you up with a project on the East Coast so you can volunteer there,” Columbia said.
The team is not done expanding their impact on post-conviction policy and even plan to expand operations further into Idaho. Their goal is to serve as many people in need as possible.
“Down the road too is to be able to expand our mission to be able to help more people, not just the incarcerated,” Columbia said.
Columbia and Darcy both emphasized their acceptance of “serious volunteers” and their need for donations that fund the non-profit.
“Just be aware of us. We are here, we’ve been here, we will continue to be here,” Columbia said.
