Year-End 2012

Death Penalty

Message from the Director

Robin M. Maher

Eighty years ago, in 1932, the United States Supreme Court held that every capital defendant had a Constitutional right to the “guiding hand of counsel at every step of the proceeding against him.” Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), reversed the convictions and death sentences of nine young men known as “the Scottsboro Boys.” This landmark decision created the expectation that no capital defendant would have to face a capital trial without a competent and effective legal advocate at his side.