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About the Louisiana
Capital Assistance Center
The Louisiana Capital Assistance Center is a New Orleans based
non-profit law office established in 1993 as the Louisiana
Crisis Assistance Center. The LCAC was created to rectify some
of the greater excesses of the death penalty in the Southern
states.
Shortly after its inception, the LCAC targeted Louisiana's
under-funded indigent defense system. At that time, the maximum
allowable payment for the defense of a capital trial was $1,000.
The LCAC engaged in litigation that ultimately resulted in the
reform of indigent defense funding in the state. In 1994
Louisiana saw the establishment of the Louisiana Indigent
Defender Board (LIDB), with $7 million devoted to indigent
defense in the state.
Since that time the LCAC has successfully defended scores of
capital defendants at all stages of the process while
concentrating on defending cases at the trial level.
Frustrated with the errors and injustices in the trial system,
in 1999 the LCAC sought to improve the standard of capital
defense by establishing the Orleans Parish Preliminary Hearing
Project. The OPPHP provided intensive assistance in the earliest
stages of a case to everyone charged with a capital offence in
Orleans parish. In the 30 months from January 1, 1999, the OPPHP
helped conclude 119 capital prosecutions, resulting in dismissal
of the charges in an extraordinary 100 (84%) of the cases. The
LCAC recently turned that project over to the local public
defender.
Since its inception, the LCAC has insisted upon exhaustive
investigation as the main component of defending capital
indictments. Grounded in such investigation, LCAC staff have
been able to provide capital juries with full pictures of our
clients and their humanity.
The LCAC's emphasis on capital investigation has lead to the
development of a cutting edge investigative organization,
A
Fighting Chance. Since 2002, the LCAC has hosted and
supported the work of
A
Fighting Chance, an agency of investigators that
specializes in developing mitigation evidence for persons facing
the death penalty in Louisiana.
A focus on the human element of capital cases has also allowed
the LCAC to credibly and effectively engage the victim survivors
of capital crimes. In one recent case, the LCAC was able to gain
the support of the victim's mother. Despite her son's tragic
death, she courageously spoke out against the death penalty for
our client.
The LCAC also acts as a resource by consulting with public
defenders handling cases around the state. It assists lawyers on
dozens of cases in the region at every stage, particularly in
those parishes and counties where the death penalty is used most
aggressively. The LCAC is also heavily involved with local and
national training conferences.
The LCAC has exposed and challenged racial bias in the charging
process, in the jury system and in capital sentencing practices.
In several parishes, the LCAC documented longstanding patterns
of discrimination against African-Americans in the appointment
of grand jury foreman. In Ouachita Parish, the LCAC proved that
a black person had never been selected grand jury foreperson in
the history of the parish even though the parish has a black
population of 33.6 percent. The LCAC has also targeted
prosecutor’s unlawful exclusion of blacks from jury service in
criminal cases. The
Blackstrikes study concentrated on Jefferson Parish, a
suburban white-flight community of New Orleans. It showed
prosecutors were three times more likely to reject, or strike,
an African-American than a white person.
In 2002, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the
execution of persons with mental retardation was
unconstitutional (Atkins v. Virginia, 536 US 304 (2002)). The
LCAC has been at the vanguard of this new area of litigation,
establishing an Atkins Project.
In 2002 LCAC client Eddie Mitchell became the first death row
prisoner in Louisiana to be removed from Death Row because of
the Atkins holding. Since then the LCAC has successfully
represented a number of capital defendants with Atkins claims.
The LCAC has also provided training and consultation on Atkins
issues to public defenders and in the legislative arena.
When
Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans
in August 2005, it brought a city to its knees and exposed a
chaotic and repressive criminal justice system. The LCAC led
efforts to assist displaced and wrongly incarcerated detainees
who were evacuated to prisons across Louisiana. While members of
our staff endured their own personal hardships, we continued to
provide help for those who had been forgotten in the storm’s
aftermath. From this unprecedented disaster, there is an
opportunity to improve a system that was at breaking point
before the storm. The LCAC will play a crucial role in these
efforts.
Although based in Louisiana, the LCAC has been involved in cases
across the South, including in Mississippi, Texas, Alabama,
Georgia and Florida.
In 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz, the LCAC successfully sued to close the Mississippi
gas chamber. Then, in 1997, the LCAC addressed Mississippi's
refusal to provide counsel to those on its Death Row. Russell v.
Puckett et al., No. 3:97cv596WS (S.D.Miss.). This required
imaginative litigation, since eight years before the U.S.
Supreme Court had declared that the constitution did not compel
the provision of lawyers under these circumstances. Murray v.
Giarratano, 492 U.S. 1 (1989). However, the LCAC proved it was
impossible for these defendants to represent themselves. This
litigation ultimately forced the state supreme court to
recognize the right to counsel, and to set up a state-wide
capital defence office.
The LCAC continues to be involved in cases across a number of
states in the South and also in a small number of federal
capital trials.
The LCAC has a lengthy history of bringing an international
perspective to bear on the U.S. death penalty. Its founder,
Clive Stafford Smith, was British, and was honoured by the
British government for 'services to humanity' in this work. A
number of highly skilled foreign nationals have been attracted
to work at the LCAC.
Owing to these international links, the office has also
specialized in the defence of foreign nationals. Louisiana
dismissed all charges against LCAC client Matias Martinez, from
Mexico, in 1995. The LCAC secured a sentence of life at a
re-sentencing trial for Krishna Maharaj, a British man
previously condemned to death in Florida. The LCAC has also
assisted in the representation of British citizens Nicholas
Ingram (Georgia), Tracy Housel (Georgia), and John Elliott
(Texas). The LCAC continues to provide legal assistance to a
number of foreign nationals on America's death row.
The LCAC has been active in the application of international law
to the death penalty, working closely with Amnesty International
on a number of cases involving juveniles. Additionally, the LCAC
has vigorously litigated Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
issues in the case of Krishna Maharaj, The LCAC also
successfully brought the first challenges to racial
discrimination before the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights over a decade ago in Leo Edwards v. State of Mississippi.
In to its second decade, the LCAC strives to improve and expand
the effect of its human rights work while continuing to focus
primarily on the defense of indigent defendants facing the death
penalty in Louisiana.
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