TAR HEEL OF THE WEEK

---

Lawyer boosts confidence in convictions


By MATTHEW EISLEY, Staff Writer

It might come as a surprise, but the lawyer behind
North Carolina's new Actual Innocence Commission
is not a sandal-wearing liberal Democrat from Chapel     

Hill who scorns the death penalty and thinks
Al Gore was robbed.

Well, OK, Chris Mumma did go to UNC-Chapel
Hill for both undergraduate and law school, but
she's a Duke University fan.

christine cecchetti mumma BORN: February 12, 1962 in Morristown, N.J. HOME: Durham FAMILY: Husband Mitch Mumma, a Durham venture capitalist; children Samantha, 14, Kyle, 12, and Madison, 9 EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree, dean's list, in business administration, UNC-Chapel Hill, 1985; law degree, dean's list, UNC-Chapel Hill, 1998 CAREER: Part owner, The Hideaway Bar at Duke University, 1980 to1987; financial analyst and manager, Nortel Networks, 1985 to 1994; law clerk, N.C. Court of Appeals, 1998; law clerk, N.C. Supreme Court, 1999 to 2001; legal counsel, N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, 2001 to present; de facto executive director, N.C. Actual Innocence Commission, 2002 to present RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION: Member, Holy Infant Catholic Church, Durham ENJOYS: Visiting with siblings, nieces, and nephews; creative cooking; travel; boating; sitting by the ocean CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT: Her children; e-mail and spell-check programs NOW READING: "Best Practice Recommendations for Eyewitness Evidence Procedures: New Ideas for the Oldest Way to Solve a Case" by Turtle, Lindsay and Wells; and People magazine

And, yes, in fact, Mumma does own a pair of Birkenstock clogs. But she sure didn't wear them Oct. 25 when she and her venture-capitalist husband were hosts of an election campaign fund-raiser for Republican U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, or while she helped run the 2000 campaign of the state Supreme Court chief justice for whom she was a law clerk, Republican Beverly Lake Jr.

Mumma, a Durham Republican, doesn't believe President Bush stole the 2000 presidential election from Gore. And she supports the death penalty for some murders -- although avowedly not when the defendant is innocent, which really happens. And which deeply upsets her.

That and her religious faith help explain why Mumma, a wealthy former Nortel Networks executive and the mother of three, got interested in reducing the chances of sending innocent people to prison -- or executing them -- for crimes they didn't commit.

"The innocence issue is not related to a political party or a position on the death penalty," she said. "It's about injustice. It's not only justice for the person who is in prison and shouldn't be, it's also justice for the person who is not in prison and ought to be. Getting the right person is important for everybody."

Lake, who established the commission last fall at her urging, said Mumma, 41, is the right person as its de facto executive director, one of two jobs she works for free. The other is as legal counsel of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, which has university law and journalism students who investigate prisoners' claims of innocence.

"She's absolutely the guiding light and driving force behind the Actual Innocence Commission," Lake said. "She called some of the North Carolina cases to my attention and brought it all into focus, along with the national picture. She got me centered on it."

One of Mumma's colleagues on the commission singled her out for public praise in January at a national conference on preventing wrongful convictions.

"Most of these types of issues require a spark plug," bragged commission member Bill Kenerly, the Republican district attorney in Salisbury. "We certainly have one in Chris Mumma."

Mumma is a former bartender who smokes cigars, makes a mean margarita, and can curse in French, Italian and Arabic.

From a bar to the bar

She is the fourth of five children in a religious family and grew up in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Libya, Italy and Saudi Arabia.

"I think my upbringing in the Catholic church developed my compassion for people, including the wrongly convicted," she said.

Mumma says her dad, a chemical engineer, taught her commitment and hard work, and her mom conveyed organizational and time-management skills.

She has used them all.

After high school, the then Chris Cecchetti went to work mixing drinks at the old Hideaway Bar on Duke's campus, saving up money to go to college 12 miles down the road at Chapel Hill.

She bought an interest in the bar, began dating fellow bartender Mitch Mumma, and kept both up through her undergraduate years as a dean's list business major.

"It was a good business experience," she said. "You ordered the beer, worked on the schedule. And we had a very good return on our investment."

After graduating in 1985, she married Mitch and went to work for Nortel as a financial analyst. She stayed nine years, rising to the level of director of financial planning and analysis for Nortel's North American Switching unit.

She was on Nortel's fast track, she said, getting the highest possible performance ratings all nine years and running an office with nine employees.

But she had always been interested in law. In 1988, pregnant with her first child, she served on a Durham murder trial jury.

"I got the bug again," she said.

She left Nortel in 1994 and started law school the next year, often taking her three young children to school with her.

She worked in a criminal law clinic with Professor Rich Rosen, who would later help launch the Center on Actual Innocence.

After graduating from law school in 1998, she worked briefly as a law clerk for two judges on the state Court of Appeals, and then went to work clerking for Lake at the Supreme Court.

"She was fabulous, excellent," he said. "She certainly knows the law very well, and she's got a lot of energy."

The commission idea

Mumma left the court in 2001 after helping Lake get elected chief justice. Rosen recruited her as the lawyer for the innocence center, where she would work with the students and professors reviewing innocence claims.

Seeing some of the same problems cropping up in case after case, and knowing from her experience that court appeals often can't address them, Mumma got the idea for the commission to explore ways of preventing mistaken convictions in the first place.

The idea appealed to Lake's interest in boosting public confidence in the court system.

The commission, a mix of judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors, academics, and victim advocates, meets Friday for the third time. It is considering ways to improve crime investigations and trial procedures. It might look into creating a new kind of truth committee outside the courts to investigate claims of innocence.

"I think this commission can have an impact on how efficient and respected our justice system can be," Mumma said. "It's real life, real people."

Pulling it off is like tending bar, in a way, only with nicer shoes.

"Because of Mitch's job, we entertain a lot," she said. "I was comfortable bartending and talking with customers, and I'm comfortable sitting in a commission meeting and talking with [Attorney General] Roy Cooper. I own clogs, and I own black rhinestone evening shoes."

Mumma said her goal is to continue the commission's work for several years, help pass laws or change police practices to make convictions more reliable, and then pursue her next job, one she has seen up-close: appellate judge.

"I think I could love that job," she said.

Lake said he believes that's Mumma's destiny.

I think she would make a superb judge someday," he said. "She wants to make her mark in the law. She's pretty well doing that already."

Staff writer Matthew Eisley can be reached at 829-4538 or meisley@newsobserver.com.