The Fair Trial Initiative thanks all who contributed to our 2008 end-of-year fundraising drive.

Your participation helped make it one of the most successful ever.

• 129 people sentenced to death since 1973 have subsequently been fully exonerated. This includes five people sentenced to death in North Carolina: Samuel A. Poole, Christopher Spicer, Timothy Hennis, Alfred Rivera, Alan Gell, Jonathan Hoffman, Glen Edward Chapman and Levon Jones.
• Since 1997, the American Bar Association has called for a moratorium on executions nationwide, until such time as states can ensure that the death penalty is administered fairly and that there is only minimal risk of executing an innocent person. Among the problems cited by the ABA: "grossly unqualified and undercompensated lawyers, who have nothing like the support necessary to mount an adequate defense, are often appointed to represent capital clients."
• Two out of every three death sentences appealed nationwide between 1973 and 1995 were eventually overturned. Egregiously incompetent representation at trial was the single most common cause of reversal. In North Carolina, over 60% of death sentences handed down in that period were reversed on direct appeal or in state post-conviction. Another 10% were reversed in federal court.
• Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in North Carolina, the primary grounds for relief in state court have been ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial misconduct. (This figure does not include inmates whose sentences were vacated upon a finding of mental retardation subsequent to Atkins v. Virginia.)
• Although reforms have been introduced in recent years to create more rigorous standards for death penalty lawyers, there are dozens of inmates currently on death row whose trial attorneys did not have the experience, knowledge, or resources North Carolina requires today. At least 16 people have been executed without having had the benefit of minimally qualified trial counsel.

• Technical procedural rules sharply limit the availability of relief in state court. Furthermore, the inmate has no recourse for any error made by counsel from this point on.
• With the passage of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Congress severely restricted the ability of federal courts to review state trial court error.
• Earlier that same year, Congress eliminated funding for death penalty resource centers, which in many states housed the only competent capital attorneys available.

Mark Kleinschmidt, Executive Director Mark Kleinschmidt, FTI's Executive Director, joined FTI after six years as a staff attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation where he represented nine members of North Carolina's death row and consulted in numerous other cases. Mark continues to represent several death row inmates in his new capacity as Executive Director. Mark earned his bachelor's degree in Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1992 and his J.D. from University of North Carolina School of Law in 2000. He was also recently re-elected to a second term as a member of the Chapel Hill Town Council.

Sarah Anthony, Deputy Director Sarah Anthony is FTI's Deputy Director. She was one of FTI's two inaugural law fellows in 2001. Since then, she has served in a number of leadership capacities including Interim Executive Director, Director of Training, and Director of the Mitigation Program. She has assisted in the representation of indigent defendants facing the death penalty at trial in over 33 cases, has gone to trial in six, and was important in securing an acquittal in one. She completed training at Eastern Mennonite University in restorative justice and has spearheaded the development of Defense-Initiated Victim Outreach work in North Carolina. Sarah graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota in 1988 and spent the next decade serving limited income people and focused on matters of race discrimination. She worked as a grassroots community organizer in rural Montana and later as a program director for an urban Head Start school. She completed training at the Montana Law Enforcement Academy and served on the City Police Advisory Board. Sarah is a licensed attorney and a graduate of the University of Virginia's School of Law in Charlottesville.