KhalilSuggsHawkenProjects2022

 As my Hawken Project comes to an end, I wanted to reflect on my experience. My mother being a former New York City prosecutor, and my love for shows like Law and Order inspired me to consider law as a possible career choice for myself. As of right now, I am fully dedicated to that track, so I figured getting experience in the Cuyahoga County Justice Center would be more than beneficial. Overall, the project was a success. It ended up being exactly what I envisioned. I was able to learn more about the justice system and get live courtroom experiences. I am very grateful for the work my coordinator, Jason Sobczyk, put into my project. He set me up with amazing prosecutors for weeks. I was mainly impressed with all of the prosecutors I was able to shadow. They all had unique personalities and styles that seemed compelling, engaging, and entertaining. I am glad that I could get different questions about the justice system answered, and it helped to see the difference between TV shows ...

O n Thursday of Week 3, I went down to the 8th floor, and I was set to shadow Kristen Sobieski, supervisor of the Appeals Unit. Unfortunately, she did not have any trials, so she dropped me off with different people to learn the other parts of the unit. Before doing this, Prosecutor Sobieski gave me a rundown of the unit itself. As described on the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's website, the unit ensures that criminal convictions are proper and withstand legal scrutiny. It litigates criminal cases upon appeal and post-conviction proceedings in state and federal courts. The Appeals Unit also helps out other units by providing information to trial prosecutors regarding issues of law that arise during the trial process, obtains material witness warrants, and assists law enforcement agencies in obtaining search warrants in Cuyahoga County on a 24/7 basis. It also represents the State of Ohio and victims of crime before the Parole Board (Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Office). The most engagi...

  To begin Week 3 (Tuesday), I shadowed Lisa Mahnic, who is the Child Support Criminal Non-Support Unit supervisor. Some of the things this unit does is establish the parent-child relationship (paternity), establish child support orders, enforce child support and spousal support orders, and many more. Aside from the popular athletes who can get caught up with not paying child support and end up getting prosecuted by the office, the most interesting part of this unit for me was how understanding the State of Ohio and the court was when discussing the next steps for a father who had failed to pay child support for his kid. I felt like the judge was fairly lenient with the defendant which I believe was completely just because the man had been putting in an effort to do better and turn his life around by getting a new job for himself and hopefully trying to provide for his kids. This was a great example of how being a prosecutor is not just about getting convictions, but it is about do...

 On hump day, I made my first prosecutor switch at the center downtown. I was now with Assistant Prosecutor Attorney Ryan Bokoch, the Crime Strategies Unit supervisor. When I first met Prosecutor Bokoch, he gave me a rundown of what his team does in the office and for the county. To give a more specific and precise description, the Crime Strategies Unit’s mission is to harness the collective resources of the County Prosecutor's Office to develop and implement intelligence-driven prosecution strategies that address crime issues and target priority offenders. acts as a central hub to ensure vital information and intelligence is reaching the right agencies (Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office). APA Bokoch was able to give me insight on how to track local criminals and how to look for different crime trends/predict future problems, which I am very grateful for. On Thursday, I moved to the Major Trial/Homicide Unit with APA Carl Mazzone. As you may have guessed, this unit is the one wit...

 To start off Week Two, I was able to move downtown to the County Justice Center. To lead off my project with the prosecutor’s office downtown, I was placed with Fallon Radigan and the ICAC (internet crimes against children unit). To briefly describe what the unit is, The Ohio ICAC Task Force is a federal anti-crime initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. It is a collaboration of city, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies across Ohio whose mission is to identify, arrest and prosecute individuals who engage in the online exploitation of children (Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office). The Task Force has more than 350 affiliate agencies statewide with at least one affiliate agency in each of Ohio’s 88 counties (Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office). In the morning, Prosecutor Radigan and I went up to Judge Peter Corrigan’s courtroom, my first criminal courtroom experience, to plea out a case. Before we ...

 To end off the week at the Juvenile Justice Center, I was assigned with a prosecutor named Dominic Neville. He was a prosecutor who was officially moving downtown to the County Justice Center the week of the 16th of May. Prosecutor Neville started by explaining the juvenile bind over process to be. To define it, when a child of at least 14 years of age is charged with a felony, the juvenile court, after investigation and a hearing, may transfer the case for criminal prosecution. They may do this if they find there is probable cause to believe the child committed the offense alleged as well as if there are reasonable grounds to believe that a child is not responsive to care or rehabilitation in any facility for delinquent children. The safety of the community may require that the child be placed under legal restraint as well. After learning this from Prosecutor Neville, we headed upstairs to Judge Alison Floyd’s room for a probable cause hearing. Before the hearing, I learned that ...