LONDON, Oct 23 (TrustLaw) - Whenever Sunny Jacobs, an American woman who was sentenced to death for murders she did not commit, speaks to an audience of young lawyers, she gives them a simple piece of advice. Earning lots of money is fine, she says, but make time to volunteer as well.
This was the message she gave to a group of around 300 British lawyers and law students taking part in a training session on the U.S. death penalty in early October. The course is run twice a year by Amicus and Reprieve, organisations which assist prisoners on death row.
“The real reason to do this work is out of love – love of justice and wanting to heal society and make it better,” Jacobs said. “It’s okay to work for the corporates and make lots of money, but balance your karma by volunteering. It doesn’t mean you have to be poor. It means you have to follow what you know is right.”
Jacobs’ words struck a chord with the audience in London, who sat in stunned silence as she told how she and her partner, Jesse Tafero, had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of two police officers in Florida in 1976.
Jacobs, who was 28 at the time and had a ten-month old daughter and nine-year-old son, spent 17 years in prison, five of them on death row. She was then the only woman in the United States sentenced to death, though her sentence was later commuted to life. Tafero, however, was put to death by electric chair in 1990 in a notorious execution that took over 13 minutes and caused his head to burst into flames.
Jacobs eventually won her freedom with the help of two American pro bono lawyers who worked on her case for ten years. She now lives in Ireland with her partner, Peter Pringle, who was wrongly convicted of killing a police officer in Ireland in 1980 and sentenced to death, later commuted to 40 years. Pringle, who had his conviction quashed after 15 years in prison, also shared his story. Ireland only abolished the death penalty in 1990 although it had not carried out an execution since 1954.
Many of the participants on the course will go on to work pro bono on death penalty cases in the United States. This year, around 55 people have been selected by Amicus and Reprieve to do three to six month placements with capital defence attorneys in states such as Texas, Louisiana and Alabama.
Both organisations have been sending volunteers to the United States for more than ten years. Among the interns have been QCs (senior UK barristers), partners at top law firms, postgraduate law students, trainee lawyers, retired teachers and scientists.
JURY SELECTION
The programme is designed to give participants an overview of the U.S. legal system and issues such as trial procedure, jury selection and the appeals process. There is also a practical component which focuses on investigative skills, how to gather mitigation evidence and how to interview clients on death row.
Mark George QC, a criminal defense barrister who has taught on the course for ten years, told TrustLaw that the jury selection process is often what shocks trainees the most because there is nothing like it in the United Kingdom.
“It seems to be a process which is designed to get the jury to kill your client,” said George, who was temporarily admitted to the Texas Bar in 1998 so he could assist two local defence lawyers on a capital murder trial.
“It gives the prosecution such a huge advantage because (jurors) are asked about their views on the death penalty. If they’re against the death penalty then they’re likely not to be able to serve in the jury.”
Although George and his American colleagues didn’t get the verdict they wanted – their client, Larry Wayne Wooten, lost his final appeal in April and was executed on October 21 – George believes his work analysing DNA evidence in the case made a difference. He added that volunteers can be of great help to the often overworked American lawyers.
Nikki Jeffery, a law graduate and caseworker with the Ministry of Justice who has been accepted on Reprieve’s internship programme, said the training had inspired her to offer her skills in the United States.
“It hit home even harder to me that you can’t ever take something on face value and judge someone just because they’re sitting on death row,” she told TrustLaw. “It gave me the hope that somehow I can help on these cases.”
Margot Ravenscroft, the executive officer of Amicus, said although most of the volunteers’ work will involve “slogging away” at cases that have generated voluminous amounts of paperwork, there have been some major breakthroughs.
In one case, which has not yet concluded, an intern involved in investigative work on behalf of a death row inmate discovered key evidence that led to finding the actual killer, said Ravenscroft.
Just the other day, she received an email from a barrister updating her on a case he had worked on three years ago in San Francisco. “He’s just heard the result,” Ravenscroft said. “His client’s sentence has been commuted to life without parole.”
In the world of capital defence lawyers, that is considered a victory.
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