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Our Program
Home » Our Program
The Fair Trial Initiative directly confronts the crisis of incompetent trial counsel for indigent defendants facing the death penalty.
The Initiative's mission is:
- To fund fellowships for recent law school graduates to work with underfunded trial counsel in capital cases,
- To fund fellowships for professionals to become mitigation specialists,
- To provide pro bono opportunities for associates at law firms to work on capital trials,
- To provide internship opportunities for law and social work students to do a variety of trial-related death penalty work.
Click here for more information about the fellowship program.
The inaugural class of Fair Trial fellows began their two-year placements in September of 2001. We presently have four law fellows working with experienced capital attorneys on cases across North Carolina. Fellows receive extensive training and ongoing post-placement support from the nation's top practitioners, as well as from Fair Trial Initiative staff.
Click here for more information about the mitigation program.
The FTI Mitigation Program began in June of 2004 in Virginia and North Carolina. Well before the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in Wiggins v. Smith (2003) that lawyers have a duty to conduct a full background investigation of their clients in capital cases, FTI was brainstorming different ways to solve the problem of how to identify, recruit, train, and supervise new mitigation investigators. There are not nearly enough qualified mitigation specialists to carry out the indispensable work of investigating the tragic life histories of the hundreds of people potentially facing the death penalty in North Carolina each year. Our mitigation fellows are provided with top-notch training and supervision at the beginning of their year-long fellowship while assisting with discrete investigative tasks on capital cases.
Click here for more information about pro bono program.
The Fair Trial Initiative launched a pro bono program in the spring of 2002 with the leadership of Covington & Burling and Latham & Watkins in Washington, DC. The first pro bono placements were with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. Subsequently, Foley Lardner and Patton Boggs have joined this effort by donating time to death penalty trial cases in Virginia. Law associates have the opportunity to gain hands-on trial experience that they otherwise would not get. More importantly, they are lending their talents where they are so sorely needed, to indigent defendants facing the death penalty. The pro bono program matches law firm associates with a capital trial defense team for the duration of the case.
Interested associates and law firms should contact Jack Lahr at jlahr@foley.com.
Click here for more information about our internship program.
Our summer internship program began in 2003 with a single law student. Since then we have hosted ten undergraduate, social work, and law students from across the country for both term-time and summer internships.
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