J. Kirk Osborn Fellowship

At the heart of our program is the two-year Osborn Fellowship. Each year, FTI engages in a national search to discover its newest class of law fellows. The candidate pool is diverse and extremely well-qualified, and includes individuals from dozens of the country’s best law schools who are committed to learning the best practices associated with capital trial preparation and litigation, yet dare to seek innovative approaches to providing the highest quality capital defense.

Candidates selected to become fellows have demonstrated that they are prepared to devote their careers to capital defense work. Fellows are placed on cases where the risk of a death sentence is grave and the need to pour resources into the preparation of the case for trial is apparent. They become members of the defense team, helping with the full scope of legal and investigative tasks crucial to a thorough defense. In conjunction with this on-the-job training, they attend nationally-renowned death penalty defense seminars and trainings across the country that supplement the in-house training and intensive support they receive from mentoring attorneys, permanent staff, and each other. FTI focused on maximizing the training opportunities of these young lawyers to allow for dissemination of new ideas and approaches to be applied in cases immediately.

In 2007, following the death of Kirk Osborn, one of FTI’s greatest cooperating attorneys and a member of our Board of Directors, the fellowship was named in his honor to commemorate the outstanding advocacy of our beloved mentor, friend, and champion.

To date, FTI has provided to capital defense teams the service of twenty Osborn Fellows. During their fellowships they together imparted their enthusiasm, passion and abilities to almost 300 capital cases. Today, FTI alum work in Public Defender’s Offices, Capital Defender’s Offices and in private practice across North Carolina and the country.