Criminal Justice Advocate Kevin Richardson will be the guest speaker at the Armstrong-Branch Lecture Series in the next University Forum on March 18.

Richardson and four other Black and Latino youths aged 14 to 16, known as the Central Park Five, were arrested, coerced into confessing, tried and convicted after a jogger, Trisha Meili, was brutally raped in 1989. None were guilty and in 2002 their cases were overturned based on a confession and DNA evidence.

The wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five are widely viewed as evidence that bias continues to shape the experience of people of color when dealing with the judicial system. Richardson, who spent seven years in jail before his exoneration, now collaborates with the Innocence Project working to prevent future injustices. His story and the stories of the other Central Park Five were featured in the 2019 Netflix series, "When They See Us."

The Armstrong-Branch Lecture Series, named after the first Black students to enroll at Southern Miss, has partnered with University Forum to bring Richardson to speak.