IU McKinney Celebrates Retired Professor Fran Watson
03/16/2023
Professor Fran Watson, J.D. ’80, retired in December 2022, concluding her nearly 30-year career as director of the Wrongful Conviction Clinic at IU McKinney.
Professor Watson started her legal career as a deputy public defender in the Marion County Public Defender Agency. She served as assistant corporation counsel for the city of Indianapolis for five years before beginning her career at IU McKinney as a clinic supervisor. She was a visiting assistant professor for two years before serving as the chief public defender of the Marion County Public Defender Agency. During her time leading the public defender’s office, she served as an adjunct professor teaching trial advocacy at the law school. Professor Watson then returned to the law school to serve as the director of the Wrongful Conviction Clinic, which is a founding member of the Innocence Network.
Professor Watson has received many honors during her three-decade career, including the law school’s Teaching Excellence Award, the Indiana University Trustee Teaching Award twice, the McKinney Faculty Leadership Award, and the Inspiration Award from the law school’s faculty executive committee. She was an honoree at one of the law school’s Equal Justice Works Public Interest Recognition Dinners, named McKinney’s Outstanding Alumna of the Year, and received a campus Women’s History Month Annual Leadership award. Outside the university, Professor Watson has received the Indiana State Bar Women in the Law Award and the Michael McDaniel Indiana Public Defender Commission Spirit of Justice Award. In addition, the Indiana Lawyer named her one of our state’s Distinguished Barristers.
Marcus McGhee, J.D. ’16, LL.M. ’22, was a student in the Wrongful Conviction Clinic. McGhee also was a student in Professor Watson’s Law and Forensic Science course, and she supervised his Equal Justice Works Professor Florence Wagman Roisman Summer Fellowship which focused on the Clemency Project 2014 during the Obama administration. McGhee said he wanted to be part of the clinic because he believed in its mission. “I gained a real understanding that just because a person was charged with, prosecuted for, or found guilty of a crime, they could nevertheless be innocent of that crime due to prosecutorial misconduct, perjured testimony, or faulty scientific analysis,” he said. “The clinic released me of the naïveté that members of the courthouse workgroup (e.g., prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, clerks) would not make decisions that go against logic and reason.” McGhee serves as an associate legal advisor (ethics) for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He also teaches Advanced Professional Responsibility: Judicial Ethics as an adjunct professor at IU McKinney.
“It is difficult to calculate the positive impact Professor Watson has had – in our school, the legal profession, and the larger community – over her career,” IU McKinney Dean Karen E. Bravo said. “She has always had a passion for public defense work, but her devotion to pursuing justice for the wrongfully convicted has been transformational, both for the people for whom she has been able to secure release from prison and exoneration and for the students who learned from her in the clinic. To say she will be missed is an understatement.”
