Originally published in Student Lawyer magazine, May 2003 (Vol. 31, No. 9)

SPOTLIGHT

Student's Death Penalty Work Helped Get Her Through Law School

Four years ago, Emily Maw left home to move across the world and dedicate herself to fighting the death penalty and its application in the U.S. South. Today, she's a third-year student at Tulane University School of Law, about to graduate and continue that fight as
a lawyer.

For her efforts, PSLawNet, a network of 120 law schools and nearly 10,000 legal public service organizations, awarded Maw its 2002 Pro Bono Publico Award.

As a law student, Maw says she has spent "every other moment" of her life helping anti-death penalty organizations investigate cases, write briefs, counsel death row inmates and their families, advocate for legislative change, and help teach others how to defend capital cases.

"Emily is a singularly astounding human being," says Janet Hoeffel, one of Maw's professors at Tulane. "She has risked almost everything to engage in anti-death penalty work here in the United States. She has torn herself away from her family and loved ones, lives below the poverty line, and immerses herself in the swamps and backwaters of the South in search of clues that may save a man from dying at the hands of the state."

Maw discovered her calling while she was an undergraduate in Dublin, Ireland. She read a case study on the death penalty in the United States and was appalled. "I didn't even know this was still happening," she remembers. At the time, she was volunteering at Amnesty International. Maw discussed her views with a colleague, who suggested she go to the United States to help represent people on death row.

"I felt incredibly compelled by that and immediately knew that was what I wanted to do," Maw says. That summer, between her third and fourth years of college, Maw interned at the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, which represents defendants in capital cases. The experience confirmed her interest. After going home to graduate from college, Maw returned to Louisiana and spent a year as a volunteer investigator at the center.

Maw also applied to law school and eventually decided on Tulane, in part because she had developed close relationships with several of her clients and their families. "I didn't want to be another inconsistency in their lives," she says. "I was already a part of their families."

As a foreigner, Maw was ineligible for federal educational assistance, and she was reluctant to take out substantial loans that she'd have to repay on a public interest salary. Tulane offered her a scholarship, and for the first two years of law school, she lived with a family and babysat their child. The rest of the time, there was her death penalty work at the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center.

"Law school was necessary," Maw says. "I certainly think that a lot of the [school] work I've done has given me a great context, but it was a bit of a drudgery." Still, Maw believes she had an obligation to her clients to do well in school, to show them that "public interest law is not a last resort."

In fact, Maw's anti-death penalty work often helped her get through the challenges of law school. While she was struggling through Contracts her first year, Maw says she received a letter from one of her clients who had been on death row for decades. "He was telling me to hang in there," she says.

The summer after her second year, Maw worked in Texas for another death penalty group, the Texas Defender's Service. During her third year, she spent every other weekend in Houston assisting with the capital retrial of a defendant whose lawyer fell asleep at his first trial.

Maw plans to continue her death penalty work in the United States after graduation. Eventually she'll return to the United Kingdom, but she hopes other law students will walk the path she has chosen here.

"I would tell other students to just get through law school, and don't get sidetracked by the fast-track corporate route just because you're unsure of what you want to do," Maw says. "You can always find public interest work that needs doing a lot more than almost anything else."

Anne Graber

Do you know a distinguished law student (continuing in 2003-04) who would make an interesting subject for Spotlight? Please e-mail suggestions along with your name, school, address, and daytime/evening phone numbers to abastulawyer@abanet.org (subject line: Spotlight).