The Death Penalty

 

The Center's death penalty project challenges discrimination against people of color, the poor and the disadvantaged in the imposition of the death penalty using a strategy which combines litigation, community involvement and public education.

The Center:

• Provides direct legal representation to those facing the death penalty at trials, on appeal, and in post conviction proceedings;

• Engages in efforts to bring
about greater participation by people of color and others who have been
excluded from the criminal justice system;

• Challenges the imposition of
the death penalty upon people with mental illnesses, children, and other
disenfranchised groups and educates lawyers about how best to defend
those groups in capital cases;

• Recruits lawyers to provide
representation to those facing the death penalty, publishes materials
and provides advice to lawyers defending those facing death;

• Provides materials to and
collaborates with other organizations, community groups and individuals
in efforts to educate communities about the injustices in the use of the
death penalty and involve them in seeking solutions; and

• Draws national and
international attention to and increases public involvement in these
issues through workshops, public hearings, and the media.

The expertise of the Center's
diverse staff on capital punishment and prison reform issues is nationally
recognized. One example of how the Center utilizes both litigation and
public education in its efforts is its extensive documentation of racial
discrimination in the use of the death penalty in two Georgia judicial
circuits. The evidence gathered was used in court challenges in two
capital cases, and it was also the subject of Congressional hearings and
was featured in Time magazine, the New York Times, The
ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings and other media.

Other accomplishments of the
Center's capital punishment project include:

• Several decisions by the
United States Supreme Court establishing precedents favorable to those
facing the death penalty;

• A decision by a U.S. Court of
Appeals setting aside a capital case based upon the Center's
documentation of a pattern of racial discrimination in a prosecutor's
jury strikes and other actions over fifteen years;

• A decision by the Georgia
Supreme Court recognizing for the first time the need for special
qualifications for attorneys handling capital cases;

• Numerous decisions by state
and federal courts overturning death sentences on poor people, people of
color, and disadvantaged persons in the South and establishing important
precedents which govern other cases; and

• Jury verdicts sparing the
lives of those facing the death penalty.