Panel from the 2020 Presidential Summit and Sentencing Symposium, co-hosted with the Georgetown University Law Center American Criminal Law Review

On November 6, 2019, funded by a grant from Vital Strategies, NACDL hosted Defending Drug Overdose Homicides in Pennsylvania. This day-long program featured local and national speakers sharing insights and understandings regarding the complexities of drug overdose homicide prosecutions.

NACDL lists experts referred by its members, and an expert was in your search.

Non-Capital Mitigation with Lindsay Bendell

A sentencing mitigation video should be short (approximately 10 minutes) and should show the judge that the client is more than what the sentencing report says. Are there potential drawbacks? Yes. But the rewards are greater.

Co-Sponsored by Georgetown University Law Center’s American Criminal Law Review

The landscape of sentencing policy has shifted in recent years, with federal and state lawmakers advocating fewer draconian penalties and beginning to scale back certain sentences. It is clear that the United States stands at a critical juncture for sentencing reform. This symposium is designed to equip practitioners and policy advocates with the latest strategies and research to seize the moment and foster more rational and humane policies.

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.

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.

Brief of American Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, Inc., National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Rutherford Institute as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent.

Argument: NACDL’s amicus brief argues that in the sentencing phase of his capital trial, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sought to introduce evidence in mitigation that his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev had previously enlisted an accomplice to commit a brutal triple murder and robbery on the ten-year anniversary of September 11, 2001. Tamerlan bound, beat, and slit the throats of three men (one a childhood friend) in the name of jihad.  This evidence supported Dzhokhar’s core mitigation theory that his older brother was a violent jihadist who influenced him to participate in the Boston Marathon bombings and was more culpable for those crimes. But the district court excluded it. Tamerlan’s previous jihadist murders and recruitment of an accomplice are powerful pieces of mitigation evidence, and 18 U.S.C. § 3593(c) provides no basis to exclude them. “Waste of time” is not a basis for exclusion under Section 3593(c). The proposed mitigation evidence created no danger of “confusing the issues.” Section 3595(a)’s harmless error standard is demanding, and the Government fails to meet it here. The Government fails to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury was just as likely to disbelieve Dzhokar’s core mitigation theory if it had seen the Waltham evidence.  The Government also fails to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have sentenced Dzhokhar to death even if it believed Dzhokhar acted under Tamerlan’s influence.

Comments to the U.S. Sentencing Commission regarding proposed amendments to the sentencing guidelines.

Brief of National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amici Curiae in Support of Appellant and Reversal.

Argument: The Sixth Amendment requires trial counsel to investigate mitigating factors in a death penalty case. The duty to investigate mitigating factors extends to investigating evidence of trauma and abuse. The duty to investigate abuse and trauma was well established when Terry was sentenced to death in 1997. The duty to ensure a constitutionally adequate social history investigation lies squarely with trial counsel. Trial counsel does not fulfill their Sixth Amendment obligations merely by hiring experts. Trial counsel is required to actively oversee the mitigation investigation. The decision below departs from that precedent. The district court erred in finding that trial counsel conducted an adequate investigation. The district court erred in attributing trial counsel’s errors to Terry’s experts. 

This month Chloe Reyes and Patrick Keenan-Devlin review Criminal Defense-Based Forensic Social Work by Ashley Ratliff and Maren Willins (Editors).

NACDL lists experts referred by its members, and an expert was in your search.

In June 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama that the practice of sentencing children to mandatory life without parole violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. In doing so, it also provided attorneys representing people facing life without parole for crimes that occurred when they were under 18 with new opportunities and obligations to present a universe of mitigating evidence that would counsel in favor of imposing some other lesser sentence. 

The social and behavioral sciences — and now the U.S. Supreme Court — have recognized that “kids are different.” Traditional scientific research demonstrates that adolescence is a transitional period of life in which cognitive abilities, emotions, judgment, impulse control, and identity are all still developing. Teenagers by their very nature are less mature and less able to assess risk, make good decisions, and control anger.¹