CDPL is seeking a new staff attorney to support its mission of ending the death penalty and providing the highest quality representation to people on death row. CDPL’s commitment to representing indigent and disadvantaged defendants just as vigorously as corporate lawyers defend their highest-paying clients, and training other capital attorneys across the state to do the same, has saved the lives of many who faced execution. In addition to representing individual clients, CDPL spearheads litigation and public education campaigns that address systemic injustices and cast light on the arbitrariness and unfairness of our state’s capital punishment system.

A message from CDPL Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel: When I came to North Carolina in 1992 to work against the death penalty, my first client was an African American man who’d been convicted of killing a white state trooper. In fact, if you’d looked at my client list over the years, you’d think most of the violence in this country has been carried out by poor Black people — and that most of the victims were white. However, in fighting against the death penalty, we at CDPL have necessarily steeped ourselves in the history of racial oppression in America. Because we’ve studied this history, we know that much of the violence in our country has been carried out not by the people on death row, but by white people, some of them carrying badges or sitting in the highest positions of power, seeking to maintain the social order. And most of the people murdered in this country have never gotten justice.