More and more, we are receiving email requests from folk that would like to write a guest post here on the Death Penalty Blog. Right off the bat, please know that we consider it an honor that anyone would be interested in taking the time
Since the inception of this blog, I have enlisted the services of Texas attorney and writer Reba Kennedy – not only because I don’t have the luxury of a set weekly schedule as a trial lawyer, but also because Reba understands things that I do not: using hypertext (what?), optimization for the search engines, all
More great news to share with you all: I’m honored to have been invited to speak by Professor Owen D. Jones, who teaches a class at Vanderbilt Law School on Law and the Brain and is working with several of his colleagues at Vanderbilt in preparing a law school coursebook on the subject.
This April, I will be the guest
Awhile back, a reader wrote asking about the blog’s attribution policy. So better late than never, here it is, and thanks to Kathlb for helping us get this task done.
We will license the work shown on the Death Penalty Blog under the Creative Commons Public License as detailed below, the Attribution Without Derivatives license. You may download posts from the DPB and share them with others IF you mention the DPB/Terry Lenamon as the source and include a link back to DPB. The contents of the blog posts cannot be changed. They cannot be used commercially.
In other words, please feel free to quote from the DPB as long as you identify the content as a quote, include a hyperlink to the DPB, and don’t try and make money off of it.
THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE ("CCPL" OR "LICENSE"). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE OR COPYRIGHT LAW IS PROHIBITED.
BY EXERCISING ANY RIGHTS TO THE WORK PROVIDED HERE, YOU ACCEPT AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. TO THE EXTENT THIS LICENSE MAY BE CONSIDERED TO BE A CONTRACT, THE LICENSOR GRANTS YOU THE RIGHTS CONTAINED HERE IN CONSIDERATION OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF SUCH TERMS AND CONDITIONS.
(continued)Continue Reading Attribution Policy for the Blog: Please Review if You Want to Quote from DPB
Recently, I received a very nice letter from a student in Great Britain who was studying capital punishment – specifically, the American Death Penalty. She asked my take on things, generally speaking, and I was honored by the query and proud to be able to reply. Having taken some of the language of my response from this blog, I thought it only fitting to share with its readers what I sent to Pavan last week.
Dear Pavan,
Thank you so much for writing me and asking my thoughts on the death penalty, as an American death penalty criminal defense attorney. I’m honored to be asked, and I hope that the following is helpful to you:
I’ve been practicing criminal law for a long time, and still I get asked on a weekly basis, why DO I defend what some call "the worst of the worst"? Just why is it that I defend those people that have been described on more than one occasion (and by more than one prosecutor) as the worst of the worst?
First, a word about what I do. I’m a private practice criminal defense attorney who focuses upon death penalty cases. In Florida, where I live and do most of my work, death penalty cases have two lawyers, known as first chair and second chair.
As first chair in a death penalty case, my job is concerned with the guilt finding of the defendant – the focus is judgment. As second chair, my job is to convince the jury to spare the life of the person if they are convicted – the focus is mercy. Here, arguing for mercy is legally known as "mitigation," a specialized area. Within that area, I have further specialized in mental health aspects of mitigation.
I represent young and old, the unknown and the infamous. Most recently, I was given extensive media coverage as the initial death-penalty qualified attorney in the Casey Anthony case. (I withdrew from the representation a long while back.)
"How can you represent those people?"
There are all the usual stock answers. "I am defending the Constitution." "The death penalty is not a cost effective solution." "There is no deterrent value." "As for retribution, is a life in a cage worse than death?" "The system is not perfect, and innocent people have been sentenced to death." "Death row is overwhelmingly populated by the poor and disadvantaged."
And all of these answers are true, but they don’t tell you the whole story.
Fundamentally, I do this because I want to understand. Why did this happen? How did this person arrive at my figurative doorstep, accused of a horrendous crime? What are the factors, the background, the events that led this person here?
Every person has a story. There is always some underlying common humanity in even those convicted of the most brutal crimes. It is my job to bring these mitigating factors to the jury, to shed light on the darkest heart and most disturbed mind.
To help us all to understand WHY. Continue Reading Dear Pavan — My Letter to a British Student about the American Death Penalty
Casey Anthony is back in the middle of a media controversy – this time, because the current defense team has filed a motion asking that the judge confirm her indigent status, essentially ordering the State of Florida to pay her legal defense fees and expenses.
First things first, this shouldn’t be a big surprise
As is being reported in the Miami Herald, my client Richard Wolfferts does have a past. Twenty years ago, back in 1989, a bomb was placed in a car driven by Miami divorce lawyer Gino Negretti – and Dick Wolfferts admitted to planting that bomb. He served five years in prison, and he offered
Granted, the end of the O.J. Simpson murder trial saw Detective Mark Fuhrman with a very spotted reputation. However, in the many years since that Trial of the Century, Fuhrman has worked hard to build a career, and a reputation, based upon solid facts and hard work. The Martha Moxley case comes to mind as
I try to avoid personal posting here, because my intent is to provide legal information that deals with capital punishment in this country today, for the use of both laymen and lawyers. In fact, soon I will be adding precedent and statutes and all sorts of reference links. Make things available that I think are
Welcome to my new blog.
I’ve been practicing criminal law for a long time, and my schedule has been so busy that it’s been a while since I took time to think about why I do what I do. Launching this blog is an opportunity for such reflection.
Why DO I defend what some call