SEVERAL SENIOR UKRAINIAN PROSECUTORS COMPLETE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW COURSE AT DICKINSON LAW
November 2022 — This fall, several senior prosecutors from the office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine completed Dickinson Law's International Criminal Law course over Zoom. The class was taught by Professor Dermot Groome, a member of the US/EU/UK Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, a group of international experts established to support Ukrainian prosecutors working on war crimes cases.
Twice each week, prosecutors from Kyiv and Kharkiv participated in the course along with Dickinson Law students. Groome assigned students to work in pairs on case studies and some Dickinson Law students worked together with their Ukrainian counterparts. Groome says, “It was impressive to see these dedicated prosecutors attend class, sometimes from bomb shelters, and sometimes after their families and colleagues were injured in missile attacks. They are all experienced and dedicated prosecutors. Providing them with formal training in the law of war crimes and other international crimes will help them secure justice for the many victims of the current conflict.” In March 2022, Groome established the Justice for Ukraine website containing short training videos on international criminal law.
Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor of Law Danielle M. Conway has recently called upon the deans of other American law schools to consider allowing Ukrainian prosecutors to take courses relevant to their work in their schools.
Professor Dermot Groome is a Professor of Law and the Harvey A. Feldman Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Penn State Dickinson Law. Much of his teaching, scholarship, and service focus on emerging areas of human rights and international criminal law and draw upon his deep expertise and experiences. After starting his career in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office where he was a member of the Sex Crimes Unit and after working in Jamaica, W.I. on issues of community development, human rights, and children’s rights, Professor Groome worked in Cambodia. While in Cambodia, he served as a Legal Advisor to the International Human Rights Law Group, helped lead an investigation into a 1997 attack on peaceful protestors and drafted a report for the UN Security Council, helped the Cambodia Defender’s Project and Legal Aid of Cambodia investigate deaths in police custody, worked on issues related to the incarceration of children, and wrote a draft juvenile criminal procedure code. Professor Groome subsequently spent over 11 years as a senior war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He investigated and drafted the first genocide indictment against a sitting head of state, Slobodan Milošević, and was the Senior Trial Attorney for the Bosnia indictment. In total, Groome led the prosecution of five international criminal trials including the case against Ratko Mladić, who was convicted of genocide for the murder of over 7,000 men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. He led eight large complex international investigations of senior military, political, and police officials. Groome’s cases all included crimes of sexual violence against women, men, and children. He was instrumental in the development of Joint Criminal Enterprise, a theory of criminal responsibility often used to assess the culpability of senior officials for the crimes committed by their subordinates. Two documentaries have been made about Professor Groome’s cases: The Trial of Ratko Mladić (PBS/Frontline 2019) and Crimes Before the ICTY: Višegrad (UN TV 2017).