In a recent article for Criminal Law & Justice Weekly, Paige Campbell, student project leader for the 2015/16 death penalty project and a summer 2014 death penalty intern in the US, reflects on her experience as a former capital defence intern in Texas.

The Centre for Human Rights in Practice is delighted to share the opening paragraphs of Paige’s inspirational article, and invites you read the full story available at www.criminallawandjustice.co.uk/features/Reflections-Deep-rooted-Flaws-Capital-Defence-System (via free login).

“How can you stay sane when all you hear, see and smell is desperation, fear, death? I’ve seen hundreds of them walk down this hallway for the last time; some guilty, some innocent.”

These are the words of Anthony Graves, a former Death Row inmate in Texas, recently exonerated after 18 long years locked in an 8 x 10 cell accused of a murder he did not commit. His story is not uncommon. Despite the high costs of using a death sentence as a regular form of punishment, the procedure is not as meticulous as one might hope. Reading his story along with hundreds of others portraying the failings of attorneys, police officers and even Judges are what led me to an internship in Texas last summer; an experience which I will never forget.

When I told my family that I had secured a six week internship working on Capital Defence cases, nearly all asked me “why”. Awkward silences often followed as they couldn’t understand why I would want to help “murderers”. After years of volunteering with our Death Penalty pro bono group at the University of Warwick, I was able to help them understand by reeling off examples of clear failings in the system. Cases where attorneys have turned up drunk or ill-prepared, times where Judges have fallen asleep during the trial are not just myths circulated by glossy-eyed humanitarian groups. There are incriminating statistics of the shocking number of mentally-ill people sentenced to death despite clear judgments in Atkins v. Virginia and Hall v. Florida stating that it is unconstitutional to do so. Furthermore, despite an equal number of black and white murder victims, 80 per cent of people executed have involved the murder of white victims only. (…) All of these arguments helped my family understand that to me what mattered was not the crime itself, but the prevailing of true justice; the right that everyone should always have to a fair trial.

For me, however, having these arguments up my sleeve was not enough. I needed to be able to witness it to fully understand how deep the flaws were. Despite all the statistics, I still had to deal with the fact that for many, the death penalty is the only way to punish someone for their crimes according to the maxim “an eye for an eye”. I felt that I could only argue that the failings of the system were more important than this idea; that it was being administered in a way that was causing more harm, if I had experienced it first-hand.

(Read the full story: www.criminallawandjustice.co.uk/features/Reflections-Deep-rooted-Flaws-Capital-Defence-System)