Georgia Capital Defender Capital Case Training

The purpose of the Capital Case Litigation Initiative (CCLI) is to provide high-quality training and technical assistance on death penalty issues to judges and attorneys who litigate death penalty cases. This program focuses on ensuring quality representation and reliable jury verdicts. The goals of CCLI are to increase the number of capital litigation attorneys trained in death penalty cases, and to ensure that defense counsel, prosecutors, and judges have the most up-to-date and comprehensive information available to them on death penalty litigation.

The Georgia Capital Defender Office (GCDO) will use this funding to expand its current two-day annual training to a comprehensive, multi-track, four-day training seminar that will: provide capital case team members with vital elements of death penalty defense; provide an additional intensive practical training component to practitioners currently handling death penalty cases in Georgia; and providing training to other professionals who are members of the capital case team, such as mitigation specialists and mental health experts engaged in capital defense representation. The seminar will include: a comprehensive basic training that covers vital elements of death penalty defense; an additional intensive practical training component to practitioners currently handling a death penalty case in Georgia; training for non-attorney professionals who are members of the capital case team; and cutting edge strategies and issues in death penalty defense.

The training strategy under this proposed program will improve the quality of representation in Georgia and reduce the number of death penalty verdicts reversed on appeal due to error by expanding currently insufficient training opportunities for attorneys, mitigation specialists and mental health experts in Georgia.

CA/NCF