Time: Atlanta’s first Black female district attorney is at the center of America's converging crises
UC law professor offers thoughts on reforming prosecuting attorney offices
Time magazine profiled the Atlanta-area’s first black female district attorney, Fani Willis. As Fulton County’s chief prosecutor, Willis has mandate to dispense justice in a city know as the ‘cradle of the American civil rights movement,’ the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. Like other big-city prosecutors, Willis is under pressure to reduce and punish crime, even as limiting imprisonment had just gained overwhelming public support and some degree of legal traction. This comes as Atlanta homicides rose more than 60% in 2020, hitting 157 people killed. Willis was elected on a promise to operate in a more progressive fashion.
Mark Godsey, a professor of law at the UC College of Law director of the Ohio Innocence Project, says many of these self-identified progressive candidates, once elected find themselves surrounded by long-term prosecutors working in their offices. Those people are, more often than not, determined to do things the old way. “In my experience when somebody is a lifelong prosecutor and they run on a progressive platform, they don’t tend to stick to it as long as somebody who really comes from an outside perspective” Godsey told Time. “They grew up in that culture as well so they sort of come from that mentality.”
Read the entire Time story online.
Learn more about the Ohio Innocence Project.
Featured image of Mark Godsey taken by Lisa Ventre/UC Creative Brand.
Related Stories
Sugar overload killing hearts
November 10, 2025
Two in five people will be told they have diabetes during their lifetime. And people who have diabetes are twice as likely to develop heart disease. One of the deadliest dangers? Diabetic cardiomyopathy. But groundbreaking University of Cincinnati research hopes to stop and even reverse the damage before it’s too late.
Is going nuclear the solution to Ohio’s energy costs?
November 10, 2025
The Ohio Capital Journal recently reported that as energy prices continue to climb, economists are weighing the benefits of going nuclear to curb costs. The publication dove into a Scioto Analysis survey of 18 economists to weigh the pros and cons of nuclear energy. One economist featured was Iryna Topolyan, PhD, professor of economics at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business.
App turns smartwatch into detector of structural heart disease
November 10, 2025
An app that uses an AI model to read a single-lead ECG from a smartwatch can detect structural heart disease, researchers reported at the 2025 Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association. Although the technology requires further validation, researchers said it could help improve the identification of patients with heart failure, valvular conditions and left ventricular hypertrophy before they become symptomatic, which could improve the prognosis for people with these conditions.