Panel discussion on the death penalty: Legal and moral issues

April 4, 2008

News Release
A panel discussion on "The Death Penalty: Legal and Moral Issues," will be held on Friday, April 4th at 6:00 p.m. in Moot Court I in the Lamar Law Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law. Sponsored by the American Constitution Society and Mississippians Educating for Smart Justice, the panel discussion is open to the public. The speakers will address a wide range of issues, including the role of race and racism, international human rights, and the impact of capital crimes on the families of the victims.There is no fee for admission and there will be a reception following the discussion.

Speakers include:

Deborah T. Fleischaker, Director of the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project. In this position, she encourages bar associations to press for moratoriums in their jurisdictions and encourages state government leaders to establish moratoriums and undertake detailed examinations of capital punishment laws and processes. She also teaches a class on capital punishment law as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Law.

George Kendall, senior counsel at Holland & Knight in New York City. Kendall began his career as a capital defender in private practice, and then worked with the ACLU in Georgia. He subsequently spent 15 years at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York. He has represented individuals facing the death penalty since 1980.

Eric Jorstad, partner at the law firm of Faegre & Benson LLP in Minneapolis. With degrees from Yale Divinity School and Yale Law School, his practice focuses on First Amendment law. He helped the ELCA develop its social statement against the death penalty in the 1980s to early 1990s. He was lead lawyer in the habeas corpus proceedings for a prisoner on death row in California where he obtained a reversal of the death sentence in the Ninth Circuit in July 2004.

Moderator: James W. Craig, is a partner in the general litigation group at Phelps Dunbar and an accomplished appellate lawyer. He served five years as executive director of the Mississippi Capital Defense Resource Center, where he represented death row prisoners in their appeals. He is currently lead or co-counsel on nine death penalty cases in federal or state court, as well as the civil rights challenge to Mississippi's method of lethal injection. He was also lead counsel for the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi in its unsuccessful attempt to prevent the Governor from de-funding that non-profit corporation. He is an adjunct professor at Mississippi College School of Law, where he is one of the teachers in the Capital Punishment Seminar and also teaches courses on Remedies, Products Liability, and Civil Rights. He is a member of the American Law Institute.

Erik R. Fleming, the 2006 Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi, was a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, on behalf of the 72nd District, is a member of several organizations and boards, including the NAACP, the SCLC. Currently, Fleming is a paralegal with the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance.

Sponsors: American Constitution Society & Mississippians Educating for Smart Justice (MESJ)

For information contact: MESJ Project Director at mesjinfo@yahoo.com or 662.820.5539; Transportation by bus from Jxn to Oxford