Spring 2001: Does Capital Punishment Have a Future? Participants Christopher Adams Christopher Adams is the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Death Penalty Resource Counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights. He defends poor people accused of capital murder throughout the Southeastern United States. The Southern Center for Human Rights is a non-profit, public interest legal project, founded in 1976, to enforce the constitutional protection against "cruel and unusual punishment" by challenging excessive and degrading forms of punishment and cruel and inhuman conditions of confinement. The Center's death penalty project challenges discrimination against people of color, the poor and the disadvantaged in the imposition of the death penalty using a strategy which combines litigation, community involvement and public education. The Center provides direct legal representation to the condemned and the imprisoned, recruiting attorneys from throughout the nation to take on such work; supporting the efforts of local attorneys, community groups and individuals; involving students and other volunteers in human rights work; and disseminating information to the press and public about human rights abuses and denials of due process. For example, the Center successfully challenged Tony Amadeo's death sentence in the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case Amadeo v. Zant, 486 U.S. 214 (1988), showing that the prosecutor secretly instructed jury commissioners to underrepresent African Americans in the jury pools. Mr. Amado who was sentenced to death at age 18, subsequently graduated summa cum laude from Mercer University after his conviction was overturned. The expertise of the Center's diverse staff on capital punishment and prison reform issues is nationally recognized. Mr. Adams holds a Juris Doctor degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from West Georgia College. While working toward his law degree at Georgetown University Law Center, Mr. Adams worked with the Georgetown Equal Justice Foundation, a nonprofit, student-run organization at Georgetown University Law Center that promotes public interest law. From 1993-2000, Mr. Adams was a staff attorney for the Charleston Public Defender Corporation in Charleston, SC, where he defended poor people accused of crimes in felony trial courts. He also wrote a quarterly column on evidence law in South Carolina in the South Carolina Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers magazine, The Advocate. Read the transcript of the chat with Christopher Adams. Reports and Articles from the Center for Human Rights (Available both in PDF and Microsoft Word) Back to Participants Spring 2001 Summit Home | Learning Links & Readings Student Activities| Participants | Transcripts National Online Youth Summit Home