York Alum Fights for Justice on His Way to Columbia Law

Shaquille Profitt, Class of 2022, has been busy since last year’s Commencement at the UBS Arena.

In December of his Senior year, Shaquille made the bold choice to join the movement to free wrongly incarcerated people, and in 2022, he joined the Conviction Integrity Unit [“CIU”] of the Queens County District Attorney’s Office as a paralegal.

Born in Guyana, Shaquille and his family sought economic freedom; as a child, he witnessed unfathomable crimes and injustices perpetrated against Black people. When his family fled Guyana for America in 2006, they soon saw that violence against Black people persisted in a different form. Despite facing new challenges, his dedication to public service has never wavered. The son of working-class people, Shaquille credits his parents for imbuing in him a deep respect for intellectual pursuits, a strong work ethic, and resilience. They taught him to “embrace adversity” and that “the battle of life is won in serving others.”

While an undergraduate at York, Shaquille majored in English, intending to teach English literature. But interning for NYS Assemblyman and Correction Committee Chair David I. Weprin, he turned his sights to law school. The law seemed the best way to help disenfranchised people seeking justice in a system that was failing to defend them. In the Assembly, he researched the inequities of wrongful convictions and published an article about the Fair and Timely Parole Act. He then applied to work in the CIU to seek answers to the questions he had uncovered during his research.

At the District Attorney’s office, Shaquille is a part of the team that reinvestigated Shamel Capers’s 2017 conviction for the murder of 14-year-old D’aja Robinson. Robinson had been sitting in a window seat on the Q6 bus on Sutphin Boulevard when gunfire erupted, and she was struck in the head and neck. Her death was such a shock that then-Borough President Helen Marshall initiated a $50,000 gun buy-back program. Rapper Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent, paid for the horse-drawn carriage that carried Robinson’s coffin to Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in St. Albans. Capers was 16 years old when he was arrested in 2014.

Capers was convicted of Robinson’s murder and sentenced to 15 years-to-life but maintained his innocence. Shaquille was moved by the series of unreliable witnesses and the lack of physical evidence tying Capers to the crime. Through an extensive review of court filings, eyewitness accounts, and jail calls, the CIU found new evidence that undermined the original case against Capers. The criminal justice system exonerated Capers in November of 2022. Although Shaquille could not bring closure to D’aja Robinson’s family, he corrected a grave injustice.

In May 2022, Shaquille received a 4-month fellowship at the Exoneration Project of the University of Chicago Law School, one of the top five law schools in the nation. While working remotely for the Exoneration Project, he sifted through a backlog of hundreds of innocence claims, making recommendations to the Project’s permanent staff. When he returned to the District Attorney’s office, he brought with him his honed ability to

deconstruct criminal cases, to search for and analyze new evidence, and to develop legal theories that favor the re-opening of cases.

At York, Shaquille was inspired by his mentors in the Humanities, whose engaging research and creative projects model the kind of critical thought that students need to deal logically with subjective, complex, and imperfect information. Shaquille is using what he learned in class to help democracy flourish in our community. In his fight for change, Shaquille is carrying out the College’s mission to “enrich[] lives and enable[] students to grow as passionate, engaged learners with the confidence to realize their intellectual and human potential as individuals and global citizens.”

Shaquille’s studies at York not only provided him with an understanding of the need for Criminal Justice Reform, he honed the leadership skills he cultivated in the College’s Office of Career Services, where he served as a Student Ambassador for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. After applying to law schools around the country, Shaquille was accepted to 17 schools, and to some of the nation's most prestigious schools including Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Pennsylvania. He will attend Columbia University Law School in the fall.

Shaquille cites as mentors three English professors—Dr. Myra Lotto, Dr. Shereen Inayatulla, and Professor Jillian Abbott—whom he refers to as his “sheroes.” He said, “their unfailing faith carried [him] through when [he] doubted what was possible.” Of his many successes, Dr. Lotto writes: “Shaquille is a talented student whose response to adversity was not to orient his future toward financial gain or political power. He instead envisions a life of undoing harm, using the tools of empathy, language, and the law. We are so proud of what Shaquille has accomplished here at York.”

Shaquille will spend his 1L summer of law school in 2024 as a summer associate at an esteemed law firm in NYC. He has been selected for the Afro Scholars program, sponsored by Kirkland & Ellis, a leading global law firm. Afro Scholars identifies talented Black law students and provides them with resources and training to help them succeed.

After law school, Shaquille will apply for a judicial clerkship and, eventually, a job in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. One day, he hopes to be appointed to the federal bench as a United States federal judge. As he says, “I want to use my law degree to protect people who are preyed on by the powerful.” Congratulations to Shaquille and all of his faculty and staff mentors at York for his devotion to justice. His continued success brings honor to the College and Southeast Queens!