In response to a critical need for lawyers to represent death row inmates in the appeals process, the Section in 1984 created the Death Penalty Representation Project in order to provide volunteer legal representation for indigent state prisoners in postconviction proceedings. The Project recruited volunteer counsel, usually from medium and large law firms and provided training in trial and post-conviction representation processes and techniques. The Project also developed legal materials, such as sample pleadings for use by volunteer attorneys.

The Project's primary objective was to increase the number and competency level of lawyers representing capital defendants or offenders. Although the ABA had studied capital punishment systems and developed guidelines for courts' appointment of counsel for indigent defendants, capital jurisdictions were not adopting or following the guidelines, meaning that whether a defendant received a sentence of life or death often depended upon whether he received effective assistance of counsel outside the capital system.

The Project's early success in recruiting counsel led to expansion of its activity, with support from the Section of Litigation, which took on the Project beginning in the 1990s. In 1998, in part because of increased attention to capital representation issues following the ABA's adoption of the 1997 moratorium resolution, the Project was able to begin a renewed lawyer recruitment program and expand its work to foster training and development of new lawyers in capital representation, improve training and technical assistance for more experienced lawyers, and offer a website practice area for lawyers representing capital offenders. Renamed simply the Death Penalty Representation Project, the Project now assists both trial and appellate lawyers.