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.