Future Hindsight

Stephen Bright served as the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, and is currently a lecturer at Yale Law School, as well as professor of practice at Georgia State College of Law. We discuss the death penalty in the United States and its relationship to poverty, race, and disadvantage. Poverty and Competent Representation The Supreme Court only decided in 1932 that a person in a death penalty case had a right to a lawyer. However, the government has competing interests when it must provide legal representation to a person whom it is trying to execute or imprison. Many court-appointed lawyers are not competent to represent someone accused in a capital case, ranging from falling asleep during trials, showing up drunk, or being plain inexperienced for capital cases. In a system like this, the people on death row are largely the most vulnerable in our society: extremely poor, victims of racism, suffering from mental illness, or with limited intellectual capabilities.  Race and the Death Pe