A Community Divided: Defense Attorneys and the Ethics of Death Row Volunteering

Abstract

When death row inmates elect to waive appeals and proceed directly to execution a series of problematic legal and ethical questions are raised. This article examines the ethics of volunteering from the perspective of death row inmates’defense attorneys. Studying attorneys is important for two reasons: since they are charged with protecting their clients’interests they must resolve the difficult question of whether death is ever in someone's best interest; and perhaps more important, most death row defense attorneys are themselves against the death penalty and must thus negotiate between their clients’desire for execution and their own personal value systems. Interviews were conducted with 20 attorneys who have participated in representing would‐be volunteers. Qualitative analysis suggests that most are faced with profound ethical dilemmas, both professional and personal, when a client elects to waive appeals. This article explores how attorneys interpret, experience, and resolve those dilemmas.

Setting, Speaking, and Framing in the News Discourse of Elected Executions: A Play in Three Acts

“…These binary frames are consistent with the socio-legal literature which tends to discuss EEs through a dominant discourse of volunteering (suggesting a positive framing of EEs) and a minority discourse of suicide (suggesting a negative framing of EEs; Harrington 2000). In terms of the larger national debate on capital punishment, a volunteering/choice frame tends to support the inmate's desire for swift execution, thus aligning with pro-death penalty activists, while a suicide/competence frame tends to question the inmate's intentions and/or mental health, thus aligning with death penalty abolitionists (Harrington 2000(Harrington , 2004Muschert, et al 2009). Here, we go beyond this analysis to consider journalists' selection of frames in the context of both setting and speaking, with…”

“…Dieter 1990) and the appropriate duties of mental health professionals and defense counsel in this unusual legal context (e.g. Harrington 2000;Wallace 1992). As noted, our interest is in how EEs are framed by the media (our prior study), and how framing practices help establish broader cultural authority over the phenomenon of EEs (our present study).…”

“I'll Make Them Shoot Me”: Accounts of Death Row Prisoners Advocating for Execution

“…These criteria are commonly applied in other parts of the criminal justice system. In accepting a guilty plea, for example, the court engages in a (usually rote) colloquy with the defendant designed to elicit the defendant's agreement that he understands that by pleading guilty, he abandons certain constitutional trial rights (the "knowing" criterion), that he has not been coerced into giving up these rights (the "voluntary" requirement), and this decision reflects that the defendant, having been advised by counsel, under-1 Death-sentenced prisoners who drop their appeals in order to hasten their executions are commonly called "volunteers" (Blume 2005;Brisman 2009;Harrington 2000). Because the connotations of free will (and civic-mindedness) associated with the word "volunteer" are unsettled, I enclose the word in quotation marks.…”

“…Death‐sentenced prisoners who drop their appeals in order to hasten their executions are commonly called “volunteers” (Blume ; Brisman ; Harrington ). Because the connotations of free will (and civic‐mindedness) associated with the word “volunteer” are unsettled, I enclose the word in quotation marks.…”

Self-Affirmation through Death: A Contribution to the Sociology of Suicide through Literature

“…Between January 1976 and March 2003, 97 (12 percent) of those executed in the United States were volunteers. In the limited number of sociological studies of this topic, Harrington (2000Harrington ( , 2004 discusses the role that death row prisoners have in choosing and speeding up the timing of their executions. In both physician-assisted suicide and death row volunteering cases, the concept of self-affirmative suicide may be applied to cases in which persons competently and rationally end their own lives.…”