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Faculty Profiles
Seeking Justice For War Crimes
Growing up in Bulgaria, bordered by the Balkan nations of
Rumania and Old Yugoslavia,
Jenia Iontcheva Turner could
not help but be influenced by the region’s political upheavals
in the 1990s. As a teenager she came to the United States in 1994
with her parents. Today Turner is an associate professor in Dedman
School of Law, immersed in the work of international tribunals
and the legal networks that help investigate
and prosecute cases of war crimes
and genocide.
She was only 12 when the Berlin Wall
and the communist bloc that controlled
Eastern Europe fell in 1989. “It was a
pretty defining moment in my childhood,”
Turner recalls. “It shaped my interests.”
Turner’s research frequently brings her
back to one big question: Is justice best
served by seeking legal punishment at the international level, or
healing for the victims through something like a truth commission
or criminal proceedings at the national level?
“A criminal trial is not always the best way to serve multiple
goals,” Turner says. But it is important to hold leaders accountable
for their criminal behavior, she adds, if only to give victims a voice
in the process.
“It was critical for Bulgaria (her country’s long-serving Communist
leader Todor Zhivkov was tried for corruption after he
was forced out of office) and it was critical for Iraq to see that
even leaders are subject to the law. The message is that conflict
will be resolved through the law, not by force.”
Criminal trials are frequently the approach of last resort because
they are expensive and time-consuming. Once a criminal trial is
chosen, however, Turner says it should be structured to serve the
various goals of international criminal justice – adjudicating guilt
and imposing punishment, promoting the rule of law, giving victims
a voice and creating a more complete historical record for future
generations. Her research examines how criminal trials can be designed
so as to best serve these goals.
Turner attended law school at Yale, where she was a Coker Fellow
and articles editor for the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal
of International Law. After her first year of law school, she
was a summer clerk at the Appeals Chamber of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The court heard
charges against a long list of individuals, but its highest profile defendant
was Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and
Yugoslavia, who was charged with crimes against humanity for
his role during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
In October Turner will deliver the Maguire Center for Ethics
and Public Responsibility’s Public Scholar Lecture on “Ethical
Dilemmas of International Criminal Defense Attorneys.” U.S.
legal ethics rules and guidelines tend to allow criminal defense attorneys
to engage in conduct that is on the extreme margins of
zealous advocacy – such as attacking the credibility of truthful
witnesses or introducing evidence (specifically the defendant’s
testimony) that they believe is false. Her lecture will examine
whether similar treatment should be accorded to attorneys who
represent clients in international criminal tribunals.
For more information:
www.law.smu.edu/Faculty/Turner
