Will feature actor and producer Michael K. Williams

Actor and producer Michael K. Williams (Omar Little from The Wire, Chalky White from Boardwalk Empire) will screen his HBO VICE documentary, “Raised in the System” at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland Marshall College of Law, Thursday, November 29. 

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion and question-and-answer session featuring Williams and his nephew Dominic Dupont, one of the individuals featured in the film. The event will be held from 4 – 6:30 p.m. in C|M|LAW’s Moot Court room, 1801 Euclid Avenue.

“Raised in the System” takes viewers inside detention facilities, where Williams speaks directly with juveniles about their paths in the system. Williams also talks with incarcerated adults about how their experiences as juveniles contributed to their adult incarceration. Finally, Williams takes viewers into an elementary school classroom to hear from young children about the impacts on their lives of parents and family members who are incarcerated. The film also explores alternative models of juvenile justice—in places like Toledo, Ohio, and Richmond, California—that offer more hope for rehabilitation instead of incarceration.

Dupont was recently released from prison after serving 20 years of a 25-to-life sentence, which was commuted by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in recognition of Dupont’s leadership in anti-violence programs for youth. For the past nine years, Dupont served as the director of the Youth Assistance Program, a volunteer group that works with at-risk youth. Dupont’s murder conviction, discussed in the film, stemmed from a fight among two groups of young men, in which Dupont, then age 19, killed someone while defending his twin brother.

The panel will also include Derrick Hamilton, who was exonerated in 2015 after serving over twenty years in prison for a murder he did not commit, Jeffrey Maddrey, assistant chief of the Brooklyn, NY Police Department and Victor Seltzer, CEO of Making Kids Win. It will be moderated by C|M|LAW Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich and offers 1 free hour of CLE for members of the Ohio Bar. The event is free and open to the public but pre-registration is requested at csulaw.org. 

The program is co-sponsored by the Cleveland-Marshall Law Alumni Association, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Criminal Justice Center, and the ACLU of Ohio.