Please join us on Wednesday, September 23, to celebrate the career of Adam Stein, who is the recipient of CDPL’s 2026 Arc of Justice Award.
This award recognizes Adam’s pioneering work in capital defense, which fundamentally shaped the work we do today, as well as his powerful advocacy for civil rights across the South. Long before many others, Adam saw that the death penalty is deeply intertwined with segregation and racist violence.
We will honor him as part of our Osborn Event at The Rickhouse in Durham. Buy tickets and sponsorships.
In 1964, just out of the Army and still in his twenties, Adam joined with Julius Chambers and James “Fergie” Ferguson II to found North Carolina’s first integrated law firm in Charlotte. Together, they dedicated their work to the advancement of civil rights across the South, pushing for school desegregation, voting rights, and fair employment practices and representing criminal defendants facing harsh and excessive sentences.
Adam argued three times before the U.S. Supreme Court and won all three cases. One of those was a landmark case affirming school desegregation. In United States v. Scotland Neck City Board of Education, the court found it unconstitutional to create a separate, predominately white school district. The firm’s work on racial integration so angered segregationists that their law office was set on fire in an arson attack, but Stein and his partners were undeterred.
Another high court case he worked on alongside others was Woodson v. North Carolina in 1976, which led the court to strike down North Carolina’s mandatory death penalty statute as a violation of the Eighth Amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment. The state was forced to rewrite its death penalty statutes with a narrower scope.
Adam fought for many clients facing the death penalty, including two who were later exonerated, Leon Brown and Darryl Hunt. Adam also won a new trial for client Chris Spicer, who had been sentenced to death in Wilmington. At Spicer’s second trial, with Adam and Fergie as defense attorneys, the jury returned a not guilty verdict after just eleven minutes of deliberation.
In the case of Michael Pinch in Guilford County, Adam and co-counsel Ann Petersen submitted an appellate brief of more than 100 pages, extraordinarily long at the time. That meticulously researched and detailed brief became the standard for death penalty briefs that is still followed today. The client was eventually released from death row.
Adam also pioneered systemic changes in capital defense. In 1980, he was appointed North Carolina’s first Appellate Defender, filing and coordinating appeals and assuring qualified counsel for indigent criminal defendants across the state, including those facing the death penalty.
During his time as Appellate Defender, he oversaw the creation of the North Carolina Resource Center, which focused entirely on representing people on North Carolina’s growing death row and heading off executions. That organization later became the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, or CDPL as most of us call it today, and we continue to live out Adam’s vision of providing the highest quality representation to people facing execution.
He was also appointed the first chair of the N.C. Indigent Defense Services Commission, governing an agency that has transformed indigent and capital defense in North Carolina by providing consistent funding and qualified attorneys.
“I can’t think of anyone who shaped our work and our vision more than Adam Stein,” says CDPL Executive Director Shelagh Kenney. “He showed us that we could win against overwhelming odds. He pushed us to be innovative, tireless, and unflinching. Now, that approach is part of our DNA. We never give up on our clients, and we will never stop working to end the racist and cruel death penalty.”
Please help us celebrate Adam on September 23 at The Rickhouse. Tickets are available here.