The following articles from The Champion are available to participants of CCLI BYOC training programs.

Capital Cases John H. Blume, Pamela Blume Leonard November 2000 63 Principles of Developing and Presenting Mental Health Evidence in Criminal Cases Mentally disordered clients can be challenging, their crimes bizarre, their lives tragic and their illnesses difficult to convey. To address mental h

Over time, advocates in the capital defense arena have figured out which strategies work and which do not work. Defense lawyers in noncapital cases can learn from the strategies developed during several decades of capital representation. They can incorporate these strategies into sentencing advocacy for clients charged with drug offenses, noncapital murder, or any other crime. In noncapital cases, the offender is more likely someday to be released and returned to society. This requires more focus on development and resources for the offender that will facilitate a smooth re-entry.

Mercy does not surface often on death row. That is what makes the story of Jason McGehee so remarkable.

In United States v. Fell, a district judge in Vermont concluded that the federal death penalty is arbitrary and biased, but only the Supreme Court can rule it unconstitutional.

Arkansas set out to execute eight men in 11 days in April 2017. Barry Pollack gives a brief description of the men and their cases.

When the court appoints standby counsel, should the court limit the role of standby counsel to a consultative one, as the court did in the Dylann Roof case?

Selecting a jury for a client facing the death penalty presents challenges different from other types of cases. The challenges are exacerbated by the fact that when it comes to understanding jury instructions, jurors’ comprehension level is alarmingly low. Capital defender Natman Schaye explains how to describe the jury selection process to potential jurors, identify and rate jurors based on death penalty views, and insulate and isolate favorable jurors.

Many capital defense attorneys know and use research that examined the death penalty on the national level, but some do not appreciate the impact and value of single state examinations on capital punishment in their advocacy. National reviews are not always focused or specific enough to draw the attention of state legislators, governors, and judges. Stakeholders are more likely to act on findings unique to their state.

Foster v. Chatman stands for the unremarkable principle that, under Batson v. Kentucky, a prosecutor’s purported race-neutral reasons for strikes will not be credited when the prosecutor’s file notes demonstrate a concerted effort to keep black prospective jurors off the jury. However, Foster has the potential to do more than remind defense attorneys and advocates working for justice system reform that Batson is still good law. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected Eighth Amendment challenges to state lethal injection procedures, concluding that the condemned prisoners failed to show that the execution process in their states posed sufficient risks of pain and suffering to be deemed cruel and unusual punishment. In addition, the Court added to this burden a requirement that prisoners identify a known and available alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain than the challenged procedure. The requirement that petitioners proffer and prove an alternative method may turn out to be unworkable. If a condemned prisoner is ever to meet this standard, he must have access to relevant information regarding the department of correction’s execution protocol, other procedures considered but rejected, and the department’s capacity to perform other procedures. This information is largely unavailable because of the secrecy that surrounds execution procedures.

Capital litigation attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best writes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recently published death penalty decision, Glossip v. Gross, has become more notable for Justice Breyer’s dissent than for its “reticent journey into the murky wilds of legal injection jurisprudence.” Breyer calls for full reconsideration of the constitutionality of the death penalty as a punishment and offers a road map for challenges going forward. Franklin-Best also discusses other death penalty cases from the 2014-2015 Term as well as the death penalty cases to be argued in the 2015-2016 Term.

Willie Herring’s case cried out for mitigation. The cry went unanswered. The 5-4 decision from the Ohio Supreme Court in Herring’s case does not break new ground. It does, however, provide important reminders about the duty of capital defense attorneys to ensure that a comprehensive mitigation investigation is conducted in every case.

The botched lethal executions in Oklahoma, Ohio, and Arizona have many legal experts questioning whether methods used for carrying out these killings violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Capital punishment is on the wane. Executions and the number of states that permit capital punishment both declined in 2012. Moreover, the ABA Death Penalty Due Process Review Project identified 12 distinct flaws that are prevalent in jurisdictions that still allow capital punishment. These flaws create an unacceptably high risk of injustice and inadequate safeguards to minimize the potential that innocent people will be executed.