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Law Students Tackle Death Penalty Cases
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USF law students Ashley Connell, Lani Virostko, Brian McComas, Tiffany Danao, and Natalie Davis (left to right), interns for the Keta Taylor Colby Death Penalty Project, pose outside the Louisiana Supreme Court. |
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After a year of studying in lecture halls and libraries, first-year law student Ashley Connell was ready to dive into hands-on legal work this summer. As an intern in the Office of Capital Defense Counsel in Mississippi, with responsibility for interviewing a death row inmate, she’s doing just that.
Connell is one of six USF students learning the finer points of U.S. death penalty law as summer interns in New Orleans and Jackson, Miss. The internships are part of the USF School of Law’s Keta Taylor Colby Death Penalty Project.
“With only four lawyers and a small staff to do investigation and mitigation for all of the cases, there is always more to do than there is time,” Connell said. “My partner and I are often able to spend the time to do more in-depth interviews and research than might otherwise be done.”
Now in its eighth year, the program is directed by Professor Steven Shatz who has conducted extensive research on the death penalty. While many law schools fund individual students’ public interest summer internships, USF is the only U.S. law school with a dedicated summer internship program for students working on death penalty cases. For the capital defense offices, which are often stretched for time and staff, the program is invaluable.
“I vet the students for them, train the students, provide the students with cars and stipends, and the students often do outstanding work,” Shatz said. In past years, death sentences have been overturned as a result of USF students’ work.
Laurel Gorman ’05 handled three such cases. Working with another student in Houston in summer 2003, she conducted mitigation investigations for three cases that eventually proved the defendants were mentally retarded. What she uncovered through interviews with relatives and local school officials and reviews of medical records saved the defendants from execution.
“Working with inmates on death row sealed my career path,” said Gorman, who is now an Alameda County public defender. “Having seen errors attorneys made and having seen what goes into a death penalty appeal makes me a more cautious and diligent public defender.”
In 2002, in Mississippi, Amy Flynn ’04 uncovered evidence that led a jury to reject the death penalty for her client. And David Brody ’04 wrote a brief that caused the Mississippi Supreme Court to permit a client to challenge his case in court. Two years later, in 2004, in Arkansas, Jason Horst ’06 and Stephanie Smith ’06 helped develop a mental retardation claim that released their client from death row.
Still, Shatz cautions students not to expect to overturn cases in the course of their 10-week internship. In some cases, students have worked on clemency petitions that were denied and their clients eventually executed. Typically, students can expect to make small contributions to very large cases. “While there have been times where students have made a difference in the outcome of a case, I tell students not to expect that. These cases can take years,” Shatz said.
The real measure of success is whether students are able to complete work the law offices otherwise would not have had the time or resources for and whether the experience had a personal effect on the student. “Did it change them and their views?” Shatz asks. “After sitting across from a person who is on death row, more than a few students have said the internship was life-changing.”
“The job we serve for the prisoners on death row involves the most fundamental fight anyone can fight: working to save someone’s life,” said Elisa Cervantes ’10, who is working for the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana in New Orleans this summer. “That, to me, is always worth fighting for.”
Students prepare for the internship during the spring semester by attending four training sessions covering a range of issues about death penalty law and practice. They are then sent in pairs to work in the offices of capital defense lawyers in the South. Each student is assigned to work with an attorney on one or more of that attorney’s cases. Under Shatz’s supervision, each student also undertakes a larger legal or empirical research project aimed at challenging a particular state’s death penalty law or practice.
Of the program’s 44 alumni to graduate from law school, three are now employed doing capital defense work; many others are working as public defenders.
- Originally posted July 24, 2008 - 
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