Please submit a detailed paper on the announced topic along with the scholarship application to classiccitycrime@gmail.com. Please do NOT place your name on the essay, as judges will not know whose paper they are receiving. This scholarship is solely based on the entrant's essay and response to the proposed question. Please keep to three typed, doubled-spaced pages.
Topic and Question:How can the criminal justice system better serve the families of unsolved homicides? Can justice be found for these families within the civil legal system? What other avenues of recourse should be available and who should walk victims down those paths? Should there be a limitation of original jurisdiction for delayed justice?
Background:Tara Louise Baker was in her first year at the University of Georgia School of Law in 2001 when she was brutally attacked and killed in her East Athens home. For the past twenty years the Baker family has tried to find answers as to who killed their daughter and sister and for what reason it happened.
In 2020, Classic City Crime Podcast and the Baker family came together for a 25 episode year long journey to help disseminate information on the case with the hopes of generating new leads. Why? For twenty years law enforcement officials refused to give the family answers due to Tara's murder being classified as an "ongoing investigation." Detectives denied the family a death certificate for ten years and refused to give the family the autopsy report until just last year at the request of the family and the podcast. Your essay should reflect some of these key components of Tara's case and how they can be addressed by those who serve in our criminal justice system: where many of you one day might serve as defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, advocates and more.