Nicole Montero/ Asst. News Director
nicole.montero@fiusm.com
Florida has the second highest number of inmates on Death Row in the country, according to the Florida Capital Resource Center.
It is also the only state that allows a jury to decide the factors and to recommend death by a majority vote of 7 to 12.
As a result of this, the Themis Fund, an organization aimed at abolishing the death penalty, has given the University’s College of Law a $620,000 grant to help improve how defense lawyers handle capital cases.
“Florida is the new Texas right now,” said Rebecca Rittgers, director of Themis Fund. “It has a death row of 404 people right now and has one of the highest execution rates in the country.”
The funding will help the College of Law’s Death Penalty Clinic, a one semester clinical course that allows students to be involved in actual death penalty cases under the supervision of Stephen K. Harper, professor, lawyer and mitigator.
“One of the things that’s really apparent in this state is that access to counsel is important when giving people a fair trial, especially in capital cases,” Rittgers said. “In Florida, there hasn’t been enough capacity to support people who are being charged with capital offenses.”
She added that she and other members of the Themis Fund are hoping that, by giving the College of Law the grant, they will be able to increase the capacity and ability to obtain legal counsel for those individuals who are being tried for capital offenses.
The grant will support costs of traveling around the state of Florida and will fund lawyers who are experienced with capital cases.
“I’m trying to sort of groom a new group of law students who will eventually do capital cases,” said Harper. “They’ll be able to understand how mitigation works and how powerful it can be, all while focusing on raising legal issues and, ultimately, on how the law can be used to make sure you get a fair trial.”
The project itself will be directed outside the classroom, traveling around Florida and providing consulting services in capital cases.
Inside the classroom, Harper will be teaching law students how to handle a death penalty case and how to help the lawyers they’ll be working with.
“The Clinic is not really so much an anti-death penalty clinic,” he said. “It’s a clinic teaching lawyers how to be good lawyers.”
Nevertheless, Harper thinks that the $620,000 grant is both wonderful and sad.
“It’s wonderful because we’re being given this opportunity to teach and train lawyers,” said Harper. “But it’s sad that this has to be done because you expect lawyers handling cases as serious as a death case to understand and to do all the things that, essentially, we’ll be teaching at the Clinic.”
According to Rittgers, the grant came about because of the leadership that the College of Law had demonstrated and provided over the years to address issues of capital punishment in Florida — in particular under the leadership of Harper.
“You’re blessed to have such an extraordinary man in your faculty,” she said. “It’s through his leadership that we became involved at FIU and, because of him, there wasn’t another option for this grant. It was always Steve. It was always FIU.”
Law students around the University are excited for what this clinic and grant could mean for them.
Christopher Flech, a junior pre-law student, is one of them.
“This is such great news for me, in particular,” he said. “I’m excited to graduate next year and apply to be a law student at FIU. There are so many opportunities in this University and I just hope that I’m one of the lucky ones that gets into this program and gets to learn about how capital cases should be treated.”
Anna Toss, a senior marketing major, also praises the University for doing, what she termed, such spectacular work.
“Even if this doesn’t impact me directly because I’m not a law student, it still makes me look good,” she said. “I’m graduating from a University that received a little over half a million dollars to train lawyers.”
She pointed out that the news of the grant is wonderful, considering that she generally thought all lawyers knew how to handle these cases, which she now knows is not the case.
“I’m proud to say I’m in a school that takes the initiative to teach students, with first-hand experience, about what they’ll be doing when they graduate,” Toss said.
Harper agrees with Toss’ sentiment and has found that University students are generally more interested in learning than in other universities.
“I was an adjunct professor at the University of Miami for 13 years,” he said. “I find that students at FIU are more motivated and more curious and more interested in the law, which makes teaching a lot more pleasurable. Students don’t just sit there looking at the clock or staring at the wall. They actually participate more. For me as a professor, that’s one of the greatest pleasures.”
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