Gary Drinkard, accused of a murder that occurred in 1993, was
assigned two court-appointed lawyers, one who did collections and
commercial work and another who represented creditors in
foreclosures and bankruptcy cases. Even though he was at home at
the time the murders took place, he was convicted and sentenced to
death.
After his conviction was overturned on appeal, the Center’s lawyers and
investigators, working with lawyers from Alabama, represented him at his
retrial in 2001 and won an
acquittal. The Center later presented Gary Drinkard to the
United States Senate
Judiciary Committee as an example of the need for competent lawyers
for those facing the death penalty.
The Center represented Tony Amadeo in successfully challenging his
sentence of death in the United States Supreme Court in 1988 by showing
that, before his trial, the prosecutor had secretly directed jury
commissioners to underrepresent African-Americans in the jury pool.
The Center represented Gary Nelson in a lawsuit, Nelson v. Leeke,
which forced South Carolina to correct constitutional violations
throughout its entire prison system.
The Center represented Joe Marsh in obtaining compensation for the
injuries he sustained at the county jail.
* * *
The Center was created in 1976 to respond to the deplorable conditions
in prisons and jails in the South and the United States Supreme Court’s
decision that year allowing the resumption of capital punishment. Since
its creation, the Center has been engaged in litigation, public education,
advocacy, and work with other organization and individuals to protect the
civil and human rights of people prosecuted in the criminal courts –
particularly those facing the death penalty – and confined in the prisons
and jails of the South.
The Center challenges inadequate legal representation provided to
adults and children accused of crimes who cannot afford lawyers, racial
discrimination and other denials of constitutional rights. It pursues
systemic improvements by issuing reports on the problems, urging reforms
and engaging in litigation. The Center’s lawyers also provide direct
representation to people facing the death penalty at trials, on appeals
and in post-conviction review.
The Center challenges cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions and
practices in prisons, jails and children’s institutions by bringing class
action lawsuits on behalf of the imprisoned. The Center also works with
prisoners and their families and other advocacy groups in urging the fair
and humane treatment of prisoners, less reliance on extreme and excessive
penalties, such as death and long terms of imprisonment, and greater use
of alternatives to incarceration. It also opposes the privatization of
prisons and correctional functions.
The Center advocates judicial independence because fair and impartial
judges are indispensable to protecting the rights of those who are
outnumbered or unpopular.
Besides litigation, the Center engages in a wide range of activities to
inform people about the criminal justice and corrections systems,
stimulate dialogue, and promote interest and activism in criminal justice
and corrections issues. Members of the Center’s staff write articles for
newspapers, law reviews and other publications; teach courses on criminal
law, prisoners’ rights and capital punishment at Emory, Georgia State,
Harvard and Yale law schools; testify before committees of the U.S.
Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and state legislatures; and
appear in the media and at public forums. The Center's staff meet with
other organizations, congregations, schools, community centers, and
businesses on issues such as the fairness and effectiveness of the death
penalty; prison conditions; alternatives to incarceration; sentencing and
parole; police stop and search law; and individual rights. The Center also
hopes that this web site is a valuable source of information about human
rights issues.
The Center’s work has been widely recognized
and is the subject of two books, Proximity to Death by
Pulitzer-Prize winning historian William S. McFeely and Finding Life on
Death Row by Katya Lezin. For further information and to order either
book, click here. The
work of the Center has also been the subject of a documentary film,
Fighting for Life in the Death-Belt. For information on the
film, click here.
The Center’s staff is made up
of attorneys, investigators, paralegals, a public policy director, a
coordinator of programs for the families of prisoners, an associate
director, an office manager and administrative assistants. The Center is
also assisted by interns and volunteers throughout the year.
Lisa Kung joined the Center in 1999 as a
staff attorney, and has been the director of the Center since the
beginning of 2006.
Stephen B. Bright is the
president of the Center and former director from 1982 to 2005. The Center is governed by a
Board of Directors which is responsible for
hiring the director, approving the budget, and directing the policy of the
Center.
The Center’s Human Rights Internship
program recruits and trains the next generation of human rights activists.
People who have worked at the Center have helped establish and staff
other human rights organizations. The Center helped create capital
representation projects in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas – two of which are
still in existence – and facilitated the formation and operation of
Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, which opposes
capital punishment in various ways such as by involving the religious
community in addressing the issue. Bryan Stevenson, who now directs the
Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, Clive Stafford Smith, who used to
direct the
Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, David Utter, who directs the Juvenile
Justice Project of Louisiana, and Christine A. Freeman, the federal public
defender in Montgomery, Alabama; were formerly attorneys at the Center.
The Center works with many other organizations such as the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center, the
American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Representation Project, the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other national and
international groups, as well as local churches, civil rights
organizations and individuals.
The Center receives no government funds. It is supported by
individuals, law firms and other organizations, and foundations. It is
recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt organization
under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Contributions to the Center are tax
deductible to the extent allowed by law.
THE CENTER’S RESPONSE
Death
Penalty The Center represents people facing the death penalty
at trials, on appeals and in post-conviction proceedings. It documents and
publicizes the denial of competent counsel for those facing death, racial
discrimination, the imposition of the death upon the mentally ill, the
mentally retarded and children, and other deficiencies with regard to
capital punishment.
Prisons and
Jails The Center seeks to end human right
abuses in the prisons, jails and institutions for children; to bring about
greater use of community corrections programs and creative, constructive,
nonviolent responses to crime; and opposes the privatization of prisons,
jails, and other functions within those institutions.
The Right
to a Lawyer (Indigent Defense)
The Center documents inadequate legal representation for the poor and
seeks through litigation and advocacy to bring about the establishment of
public defender programs that will provide quality legal representation to
poor people accused of crimes.
Judicial
Independence. The Center educates the public about the need
for an independent judiciary and helps bring about reforms to insulate
judges from political pressures.
PROBLEMS ADDRESSED BY THE CENTER
The United States incarcerates a larger proportion of
its population than any country in the world and is one of four countries
responsible for 80 percent of the executions carried out in the world each
year. Over two million men, women and children are in prisons and jails in
the United States; over 3,500 are on death rows awaiting execution. Within
the United States, the highest rates of incarceration and the greatest use
of the death penalty are in the southern states. The United States is one
of the few nations in the world that still allows the execution of
children. It is one of only five countries that since 1990 have executed
people who were under 18 at the time of their crimes.
The processes by which people are deprived of their
life and liberty are not always fair. Those sent to prisons, jails and
juvenile facilities are more likely to suffer degradation and abuse than
have the opportunity to participate in programs to help them deal with
addictions, illiteracy, mental health problems or other factors that may
have contributed to their criminal behavior.
Fairness in the courts and decency in the treatment of
prisoners have become casualties of the "war on crime." This war, being
waged against the poorest and most powerless people in society, is
destroying people, families and communities. In elections for offices from
sheriff to President of the United States, Americans have been told that
the answers to crime are greater use of the death penalty, longer prison
terms, harsher conditions of imprisonment, less due process and less
judicial review. The Bill of Rights is routinely denigrated as nothing
more than a collection of "technicalities."
In this exceptionally one-sided "debate," there has
been virtually no discussion of whether these measures constitute an
effective crime control policy; the need to provide children with
education, opportunity and hope if crime is to be prevented; the
unconscionable impact of current crime policies on people of color; and
the importance of the Bill of Rights. Resources better spent on education,
health care, housing and other urgent needs are devoted to building and
maintaining a huge prison industrial complex.
The outcome of criminal trials is often influenced by
the quality of the lawyer appointed by the court to defend the accused,
racial prejudice, the political ambitions of the judges and prosecutors
and other improper factors. The mentally ill and the mentally retarded are
particularly vulnerable. Children are increasingly being prosecuted as
adults. Even children as young as 13 may be sentenced to life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole.
Effective representation is essential for full
development of facts and compliance with the protections of the
Constitution so that courts will make accurate and just decisions with
regard to guilt or innocence and sentence. However, the vast majority of
those in prison – over 80 percent – and virtually all of those condemned
to death were unable to afford lawyers and were represented at their
trials by court-appointed lawyers. Many received only perfunctory
representation. Some were represented by lawyers who were uncaring and
incompetent or lacked the training, skills and resources needed to provide
effective representation. Many people accused of crimes meet their lawyers
for the first time in court and may spend as little as five or ten minutes
talking to the lawyers in whispered conversations in the front of the
courtroom before pleading guilty and being sentenced. Even in capital
cases, people have been represented by lawyers trying their first cases,
lawyers who were senile or intoxicated or under the influence of drugs,
lawyers who were completely unaware of the governing law, lawyers who used
racial slurs to refer to their own clients, lawyers who handled cases
without any investigative or expert assistance, and lawyers who slept or
were absent during crucial parts of the trials.
Most of the states in the South still have no
state-wide public defender systems to provide legal assistance to poor
people accused of crimes. For example, Texas (and formerly Georgia), the
largest southern state, leaves representation of those who cannot afford a
lawyer to each of its 254 counties. Some
counties conscript attorneys to represent the poor; others contract with
lawyers to represent all of the indigent defendants for a set price;
others appoint lawyers to cases and pay by the hour or the case; and some
have public defender offices. Each of these approaches is underfunded,
leaving lawyers who defend the poor with staggering caseloads and without
the resources needed to provide effective representation. As a result of
this fragmented, hodgepodge, underfunded approach, poor people are being
deprived of their liberty or lives without a fair, objective and reliable
determination of their guilt and without individualized sentencing.
The courts are the institutions least affected by
America's civil rights movement. Members of racial minorities have been
largely excluded as judges, prosecutors, lawyers and jurors even though
the majority of victims of crime in many southern states are people of
color and an even greater majority of those accused of crimes are people
of color. Local prosecutors decide which charges to bring, whether to seek
the death penalty, and how to resolve many cases through negotiated pleas.
People of color are more likely than white people to be
stopped by the police, abused during the stop, arrested, denied bail,
charged with serious crimes, denied probation, and sentenced to long
prison terms or death. Crimes in which the victims are white are punished
more severely than crimes in which the victims were members of a racial
minority. As a result, over one-third of African-American men between the
ages of 18 and 30 are under some type of court supervision; that is, in
prison or jail, or on probation or parole. Virtually every study that has
examined the operation of the death penalty has found racial
discrimination in its infliction.
In most states, the judges responsible for protecting
the rights of the accused are elected. Some are influenced by the
realization that an unpopular decision could result in defeat in the next
election. Justices have been voted off state supreme courts in California,
Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee for unpopular decisions in capital cases
in the last twenty years. Judges at the local level are even more
vulnerable.
Elected judges in Alabama, where support for the death
penalty is high, routinely override jury verdicts of life imprisonment and
impose the death penalty. One Alabama judge, who was in a closely
contested election, set a capital trial for the week before the election
to benefit from the publicity that came from presiding over it. The judge
ran advertisements in the newspapers proclaiming, "It doesn't matter
whether a judge is a Democrat or a Republican, so long as he will hand
down a death sentence."
Judges also appoint the lawyers who defend poor people
accused of crimes in many courts. Judges in Houston, Texas, repeatedly
appointed one lawyer who fell asleep during some trials and another who
had alcohol problems. After presiding over a capital case in which the
defense lawyer slept, one Houston judge explained, that while the
Constitution guarantees a lawyer, "it doesn’t guarantee that the lawyer
must be awake."
These fundamental defects in the criminal justice
process have enormous consequences. The most egregious is the conviction
of innocent people. Over 100 people have been released from the nation’s
death rows in the last 30 years after their innocence was established;
over 100 people convicted of other crimes were released after DNA evidence
proved their innocence. In many cases innocence was established by
journalists and, in Illinois, the innocence of three people sentenced to
death was established by journalism students from Northwestern University.
But, unfortunately for many poor people wrongfully accused or convicted of
crimes, there may be no DNA evidence or even an opportunity to secure DNA
evidence, and no lawyer, journalist or journalism class will ever
investigate their cases and establish their innocence.
The problems of racial discrimination, poverty and the
lack of judicial independence have other consequences. For those found
guilty, the criminal courts make important decisions such as whether a
person will be put on probation, placed in a drug or alcohol
rehabilitation program, required to perform community service, sent to
jail for days or months, sent prison for years or until death, or
condemned to die. Court-appointed lawyers for the poor often lack the
time, skill and resources to investigate the backgrounds of their clients
and present client-specific sentencing proposals. As a result, courts do
not have the information necessary to make informed sentencing decisions.
Because people of color have been largely excluded from
positions of influence within the criminal justice system, sentencing
decisions may be made without an understanding of racial or cultural
differences. White judges and jurors may bring to the court room
assumptions, beliefs and stereotypes about people of color that influence
their decisions. In Georgia, a white person is three to six times more
likely to be placed on probation than a person of color; the death penalty
is four times more likely to be imposed in a case involving a white victim
than in a case involving a black victim.
Because so many people are being sent to prison for
long sentences, prisons are becoming increasingly and dangerously
overcrowded. Many prisons and jails are not equipped to safely house and
monitor the number of people crowded into them. Medical and mental health
care is lacking for populations which include many people who urgently
need one or both.
For example, Alabama’s only prison for women is
designed to hold 350, but housed over 1,000 women who slept on bunk beds
crammed into barracks when the Center filed suit on behalf of the women in
2002. One Alabama county housed over 400 prisoners in three garages that
were once a Dodge dealership. A federal judge, after inspecting another
Alabama jail sued by the Center, said that "the sardine-can appearance of
its cells more nearly resemble the holding units of slave ships during the
Middle Passage of the eighteenth century than anything in the twenty-first
century." Programs are virtually non-existent in such places; abuse and
disease are rampant. In the women’s prison and the two jails, the Center
won court orders requiring reductions in the population and protection of
the inmates from assaults.
Medical and mental health care in many jails and
prisons is a scandal. Inmates who are HIV-positive, have diabetes,
epilepsy or other conditions may be denied their medication, resulting in
the development of AIDS, comas, seizures or other serious problems.
Medical treatment is frequently delayed or denied for those who have
serious injuries or conditions. Many of the medical personnel working in
prisons and jails are incapable of delivering quality care.
Increasingly, governments are contracting with private
companies to run all or part of prison operations. At the largest jail in
Georgia, a private health-care provider failed to provide essential
medicines and medical care to prisoners who were HIV-positive, resulting
in death sentences for some people who were arrested on minor charges and
never convicted of any crime.
Congress and the President in 1995 and 1996 restricted
access to lawyers and to the courts for persons seeking to challenge
unlawful convictions and sentences or unconstitutional conditions of
confinement. Congress eliminated all federal funding for programs that had
provided lawyers to death-row inmates in post-conviction proceedings. It
prohibited legal services attorneys from representing prisoners in any
type of case and reduced the amount that private attorneys could collect
for successfully representing prisoners in challenges to unlawful
conditions. As a result, many people who were wrongfully convicted or
suffering abuse in prison have no access to lawyers, to the courts, or to
the protections of the Bill of Rights. Those who were wrongfully convicted
or are being raped, beaten, denied medial care or subject to other
unconstitutional conditions and practices need lawyers to obtain
protection in the courts by pursuing avenues of relief that are available
to people with money.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,
signed into law on April 24, 1996, restricts federal habeas corpus review,
the process through which federal courts reviewed the constitutionality of
convictions or sentences. Habeas corpus review has long been an essential
safeguard in all types of criminal cases, especially capital cases. The
Act established a one-year time limit for the filing of federal habeas
corpus petitions, the first time in the nation's history that there has
been a statute of limitations on habeas corpus. The Act also limits the
circumstances under which federal courts can hear new evidence of
constitutional violations and greatly restricts when federal courts may
set aside convictions or sentences.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act, also signed into law
in April, 1996, strips the federal courts of much of their power to remedy
unconstitutional conditions in prisons and jails. The Act restricts any
court order to a duration of two years and limits the power of courts to
order remedies for overcrowding and other deficiencies.
