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The Gulf Region Advocacy Center

The Gulf Region Advocacy Center, or GRACE, is an independent, client-centered, Houston-based charity that provides high quality capital defense to indigents facing the death penalty at trial or retrial. Beginning with our life-saving representation of Calvin “sleeping lawyer” Burdine when he returned to Harris County in 2002 for retrial, to the dramatic life verdict in the 2008 jury trial of Juan Quintero Perez for murder of a police officer, GRACE has relied upon private donations and volunteer labor to bring the methodologies of successful capital defense offices around the country to bear in the bloodiest courthouse in America.

What's New

December 12, 2009

H Freezes Over!

Houston, that is.  It snowed!  Real snow that accumulated all day!  And, there were no new death sentences in Harris County for the second year in a row.
 
And the Dallas County DA is spending his office resources to set innocent people free.  Plus, the new Harris County DA punishes prosecutors in her office for racial discrimination in jury selection.

So, this holiday season, we can cautiously celebrate a sudden and unexpected climate change in Texas. However, the 'ol Lone Star still ain't so shiny for the fifty men and women living in peril of execution for convictions secured under the old, unconstitutional, Texas statute.

Between 1976 and 1991, nearly 500 Texans were sentenced to die by juries that had been unconstitutionally prohibited from considering their life histories as a reason to choose life.  Only about 50 of those prisoners survived to see the day, in 2004, when the Supreme Court finally ruled that Texas courts had been misinterpreting the Constitution for decades.  Around two dozen of those inmates have since been granted new sentencing trials and another 20 await similar rulings.

GRACE's Retrial and Resentencing Project has now successfully resolved eleven of these cases, negotiating agreements that saved the client’s life, gave finality to the victims’ survivors and spared both families the retraumatization of a second trial.  In several of these cases, GRACE mitigators were court appointed, but in every case our attorneys provided legal services for free -- funded entirely by private donations and grants.

Unfortunately, in some counties, the new commitment to ensuring that the wrong people are not convicted does not extend to making sure that the wrong people are not sentenced to die.  Indeed, the same Dallas County District Attorney’s Office that leads the nation in "conviction integrity" has also leapfrogged over Harris County to take the lead in securing death sentences.

Despite the new awareness of junk science in the context of wrongful convictions, the threshold for death eligibility in Texas continues to turn on the testimony of prosecution "experts" endowed with the supernatural ability to see into the future and determine that a defendant (even one they have never met) will, more likely than not, commit criminal acts of violence in the future.

In a resentencing trial, this process of “predicting” a defendant’s behavior in prison becomes even more preposterous given that his prison adjustment has already happened.  Sorta like asking a psychic to predict whether you will give birth to a boy or girl – after your child has graduated from college.  And, worse, crediting the psychic’s prediction against the evidence of real life.

But, yet, prisoners returned for resentencing are finding little interest among some of the new “smart on crime” regimes in revisiting the capital authorization decisions made decades ago by the old “tough on crime” cowboys responsible for all those wrongful convictions.

This year, Dallas County became the most lethal county in the state, with three new death sentences and one resentencing after reversal.  Next year, Dallas County plans to again seek death against two other prisoners returned for resentencing after 22 years and 34 years -- despite the fact that neither of them committed a single violent offense in their decades on death row!! 

GRACE represents both these men, on a pro bono basis, through our Retrial/Resentencing Project – a program funded entirely by private donations.  

And, we need your help.

A Year Of Grace

It has been a year of extreme highs and lows for GRACE.  In March, we secured a life sentence for a severely mentally ill man who had been returned for resentencing after 23 years on death row.   But, in April, Michael Gonzales was resentenced to die despite our mitigators’ efforts.  In May, I wrote to announce our “Best Day Ever” when we secured life-saving resolutions in three unrelated trial level cases and a remand in a post-conviction case.  But, six weeks later, I asked you to envision “A Day Without GRACE” when we failed to meet our payroll and were in grave danger of shutting down.  Your response to that S.O.S. helped us limp along, with an exciting record of successes set against the backdrop of a brutal economic struggle for survival of the office.

In July, I was privileged to stand beside Deryl Madison in a Houston courtroom as he hugged his mother for the first time after 21 years on death row.  GRACE’s Retrial/Resentencing Project provided pro bono legal services to negotiate a resolution that spared him from again facing death.

In September, we had another amazing, life-affirming, week.  First, longtime GRACE client Michael Toney walked out of the Tarrant County Correctional Facility when the state dismissed the charges against him after more than a decade on death row.  Then, just days before the trial of a terrible case where the state had been entirely unwilling to negotiate, the client finally received a life-saving plea -- offered in response to a mitigation presentation prepared by GRACE.  In an inspiring act of grace and faith, the victim’s widow publicly forgave our client, causing us to forget for a moment the anxiety of our financial peril and remember why we do this work.

A month later, Michael Toney was killed in a car accident.  Then, our mitigation presentation on behalf of a federal client persuaded Attorney General Holder not to seek the death against him.

All told, in 2009 GRACE mitigation specialists persuaded prosecutors to accept life-saving plea offers from two pretrial clients and take death off the table in four pretrial cases.  This is in addition to the seven unrelated Retrial/Resentencing cases successfully resolved through GRACE’s pro bono legal services.  GRACE staff also provided faculty to over a dozen capital training programs around the US and individual mentorship to five new mitigation specialists in Texas and Oklahoma.
But, always, these victories were tempered by the reality that GRACE may soon be forced to cut back or even eliminate the programs that made them possible.  Please help us continue this work.

Fragile Gavel Award

At this year’s Annual Celebration, GRACE proudly presented Harris County District Judge Jeannine Barr with our Fragile Gavel Award. This honor, not awarded every year, is given only when a member of the judiciary  distinguishes themselves by dispensing true justice in the face of tremendous pressure to the contrary.  Judge Barr’s courage in stopping prosecutors from using their peremptory strikes to bar African-American citizens from jury service was one such moment.  In refusing to wink and nod at the “race-neutral” explanations of two prosecutors who used 60% of their strikes to eliminate all African-Americans from a jury panel; in resisting the gravitational tug of business-as-usual and “this is how we’ve always done things,” Judge Barr’s firm adherence to the letter of the law sent a clear message that the Harris County District Attorney’s Office would be no longer be immune from constitutional imperatives and that Houstonians of color will no longer be excluded from one of the most important roles of a citizen in our democracy.  To her great credit, District Attorney Pat Lykos also seized this pivotal moment to depart from the frat boy traditions of her own predecessors by punishing the two prosecutors and publicly disavowing their actions.  It’s about time!

Fall From GRACE Award

Our 2009 Fall From GRACE Award goes to Governor Rick Perry for rejecting the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles’ recommendation that he spare the life of Houstonian Robert Thompson, who was condemned under Texas’ arcane “law of parties” for a murder actually committed by his co-defendant.  The execution of defendants who did not kill or intend to kill is not permitted in most states and not supported by public opinion here in Texas.  Nor does it serve the purpose most often given in favor of the death penalty.  (Since a “non-triggerman” didn’t think once about killing, you can’t say the threat of the death penalty will make him think twice!!)  The Texas legislature came close to repealing the law, but was deterred by Perry’s threat of veto.  Shame on him!

Changes At GRACE

Sadly, as 2009 winds down, two of our longest-serving colleagues have moved on to new pursuits.  Jeremy Sierra, who steered GRACE through some of our most difficult moments, wearing, variously, the hats of Development Director, Office Manager and Bookkeeper over the past four and a half years, has been accepted into the writing program at The New School in NYC.  The siren song of academia has also lured John Fox to NYC where he will pursue an MSW at New York University.  John came to GRACE in 2005 as a Jesuit Volunteer for one year and stayed for four years, becoming a remarkably talented mitigation specialist and trainer.  Jeremy and John have both been instrumental in building GRACE and we will miss them greatly.  But, we are very proud of them just the same!

In 2009, we also said goodbye to Jesuit Volunteer Robin Hotard, mitigator Neil Hartley and longtime Reprieve intern, Ed Roche.

September 15, 2009
Free & Painless ways to help GRACE!

September 14, 2009
Another week of GRACE

Last week was another life-affirming reminder of why we do what we do here at GRACE. Just days before the start of jury selection in a terrible case where the state had previously indicated no interest in negotiation, the client finally received a life-saving plea -- offered in response to a mitigation presentation prepared by GRACE after nearly a year of mitigation investigation by three of our amazing staffers -- John Fox, Gilly Ross and Matt Silverman, along with numerous interns.

This came the day after another GRACE client, Michael Toney, who spent more than a decade on death row, walked out of the Tarrant County Correctional Facility after the state had dismissed the charges against him. It was then GRACE employee Tena Francis who, along with several other GRACE staff and interns, first investigated Michael's case six years ago, became convinced of his innocence and recruited lawyers from the Innocence Project to represent him in post-conviction. After Michael's conviction and sentence were overturned, GRACE also provided mitigation investigation and I enrolled as penalty phase counsel. But, thanks to the amazing work of Michael's team of pro bono lawyers, our services have been happily terminated!!

Back in May, when GRACE had what I called "the best day ever", I wrote that "[a]bout the only thing that could spoil this moment is the knowledge that GRACE may soon be eliminating several of the projects and positions that made these victories possible." 

Though we have made some progress in the three months since that posting, I am feeling much the same today as I did then. It is work such as our long involvement in Michael Toney's case and other retrial/resentencing cases, which are put at greatest risk by recent cut backs in both private and court-appointed funding.

As I noted in May, GRACE is attempting to continue our current level of pro bono services and hang on to our current staff by recruiting a large base of small private donors who will enroll to make automatic monthly donations. The idea is to stabilize GRACE and replace our dependence upon a few large, unpredictable, funders with a big community of small, steady donors. These automatic monthly donations of $10, $20, $50 or $100 a month from private individuals will add up to give us a reliable monthly income that can be used to fund our pro bono work and to compensate for slashed vouchers in our court appointed work.

Since the beginning of this funding campaign, many of you have signed up to become automatic monthly donors, and others have made generous one-time donations to our building fund. But, the numbers have not added up as quickly as we hoped. We have not reached our recruitment targets in any month this year. Many of you have written or spoken of your intention to enroll as an automatic monthly donor. I'm writing today to give you a little nudge. It just takes a few minutes to set up an automatic monthly withdrawal of any amount you choose from your checking, savings, credit card or debit card. Once you establish the transaction, you never have to think about it again, except to know, whenever you see mention of GRACE's work, that you made it possible.

It's a tough economic time for everyone, of course, but if you can spare even as little as $10 a month, please enroll as an automatic monthly donor at www.gracelaw.org or on Facebook at "GRACE Saves Lives". And, please invite all your friends to join you in supporting this life-saving work.

July 24, 2009
GRACE client pleads to Life after 20 years on death row

Today, Deryl Madison hugged his mother for the first time since his 1988 arrest for the capital murder of Beulah Jolivet in Houston, Texas. Tonight, Deryl will fall asleep without the specter of a death sentence hanging over him for the first time in 21 years.

Deryl is one of nearly 500 Texas prisoners sentenced to die by jurors who had been unconstitutionally prohibited from considering their life histories as a reason to choose life. Only around 50 of those prisoners survived to see the day, in 2006, when the Supreme Court finally ruled that Texas courts had been misinterpreting the constitution for decades. Around two dozen of those inmates, including Deryl, have since been granted new sentencing trials and another 20 await similar rulings.

Through our Retrial and Resentencing Project, GRACE was able to provide a pro bono lawyer to join Deryl's team for the purpose of negotiating an agreed resolution that saved Deryl's life, gave finality to the survivors of Beulah Jolivet and spared both families the retraumatization of a second trial. GRACE mitigator Gillian Ross also provided mitigation services to the team through a court appointment, building the life history narrative that the team presented to the prosecution as a basis for sparing Deryl's life.

GRACE's Retrial and Resentencing Project has now successfully resolved nine of these cases and currently represents three other inmates facing new trials or sentencing hearings. In several of these cases, GRACE mitigators have been court appointed, but in every case our attorneys provided legal services for free -- funded entirely by private donations and grants.

Please help us continue this work. Become a Steadfast Friend of GRACE by establishing an automatic monthly donation of any amount. Make the temperature rise on our fundraising thermometer at FB Cause "GRACE Saves Lives".

June 30, 2009
Imagine A Day Without GRACE

We've certainly had our fair share of ups and downs as we struggled to build GRACE from scratch into an award-winning, case-winning, non-profit capital defense office. Many times we have been on the verge of laying off staff, cutting our caseload or even closing the doors when a donor, a grant or payment for appointed work arrived just in the nick of time. By hook or by crook, we have managed to meet our payroll without interruption since 2004. Until today.

This past Saturday was the 7th Anniversary of GRACE's incorporation and today is the first time we have failed to make our payroll since our earliest days.

They say that if a non-profit survives five years, it has long-term staying power. When we reached that mark, I breathed a sigh of relief for GRACE. But, I'm holding my breath again as I fear the current economic crisis, which has reduced donations and slashed vouchers on appointed cases, may be too much for this scrappy little office.

We have attempted to respond by shifting to a new funding base. Inspired by the Obama Campaign and other grass-roots efforts, we began this year with the announcement of our Steadfast Friends program -- an effort to establish a base of small, individual donors who will enroll to make automatic monthly donations of any amount they can afford from $10 to $100 per month. We hope that these small donations, automatically withdrawn from individual checking accounts, will be a relatively painless way (even in uncertain economic times) for our friends to hold us up and give GRACE a steady, reliable income base insulated from the economic and political vaguaries of big donors and court funding.

Some of you immediately joined us as automatic donors. Others have given what they could on a one-time basis and still others have pledged to join us as soon as they are able.

I'm writing today to give you a little nudge. If you've been "meaning to" set up an automatic monthly donation, today is the day. If you are already doing what you can, but you've been "fixing to" send out a fundraising plea to your own email list and FB friends, please do it today. If you are already an automatic monthly donor and are willing to make a recruitment pledge to sign up other automatic monthly donors, please call or email me today and we will send materials immediately.

Whatever you can give or whatever you can do to spread the word -- today is the day to move GRACE to the top of your "to do" list.

If GRACE has made a difference in the life of one of your clients or loved ones; or if it comforts you to know that GRACE is here to provide representation and mitigation services to indigent defendants fighting for their lives; or if you are relieved to know that GRACE is here to provide team consultation and training to underfunded and over-committed capital defenders in the most deadly jurisdictions in America, please take a moment to imagine what a day without GRACE would look like. And, then, please take action. Today.

See us on Facebook at "GRACE Saves Lives" or go to our website at www.gracelaw.org and read the instructions for making sure your donation repeats automatically each month on any day of the month that you choose.

Thanks for helping keep GRACE alive!

May 15, 2009
What a Day!!!

Here at GRACE, we've been fortunate enough to savor quite a few victories in our seven years, but the past 24 hours must top the list as BEST DAY EVER!!!

Yesterday morning, a young man with whom we have been working for almost a year entered a life-saving plea bargain. That afternoon, we learned that our presentation to the US Attorney General on behalf of a federal capital defendant was successful and that the death penalty would be waived. This morning, we entered into an agreement with the Harris County District Attorney to spare the life of a client who had served 20 years on death row and been sent back for a new sentencing trial three years ago. And, an hour ago, one of our few post-conviction clients, whom I have been representing for over a decade, won a new hearing on four issues!

What a wonderful feeling to see the hard work of all the GRACE staff and volunteers result in such life-saving outcomes! About the only thing that could spoil this moment is the knowledge that GRACE may soon be eliminating several of the projects and positions that made these victories possible. Due to loss of donors, elimination of funded programming and state court judges who cut our vouchers, GRACE may soon be forced to greatly reduce our pro bono services -- including the Retrial Project which has been so successful at negotiating life sentences for former death row inmates.

In an attempt to continue our current level of pro bono services and hang on to our current staff, GRACE is completely reworking our funding plan. We are seeking to develop a large base of small private donors who will enroll to make automatic monthly donations. The idea is to stabilize GRACE and replace our dependence upon a few large, unpredictable, funders with a big community of small, steady donors. These automatic monthly donations of $10, $20, $50 or $100 a month, from private individuals will add up to give us a reliable monthly income that can be used to fund our pro bono work and to compensate for slashed vouchers in our court appointed work.

It's a tough economic time for everyone, of course, but if you can spare even as little as $10 a month, please enroll as an automatic monthly donor, and please, invite all your Facebook friends to join GRACE Save Lives and support this life-saving work.

George Rodriguez Awarded $5 Million

GRACE Board member, Mark Wawro, won $5 million for George Rodriguez, who spent 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. GRACE provided the fact investigation in 2004, which helped exonerate Mr. Rodriguez.

Read more about George Rodriguez here.

Read the story in the Houston Chronicle here.

GRACE Annual Benefit a Success!

The 2009 GRACE Annual Benefit was a tremendous success. We received more donations than ever before. Thanks to all those who came and supported us, those who donated silent auction items and volunteered, or everyone who couldn't join us but sent donations. GRACE would not exist without your support.

Click Here to see pictures from the evening. .

Danalynn Recer receives NLADA Kutak-Dodds Prize

Danalynn Recer, executive director of GRACE, was awarded the Kutak Dodds Prize on June 3 by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association at he Exemplar Awards Dinner.

The award is given if recognition of her efforts to ensure equal justice for all, regardless of ability to pay.

"Recer’s dedicated efforts toward improving the standards of defending capital punishment cases" said Jo-Ann Wallace, NLADA president and CEO, "has not only helped provide clients with a fair and appropriate defense but has also served to bring a new awareness to the issue. She has acted as attorney, advocate, investigator and leader in improving the prospects of those facing the possibility of death.”

Click here to read the press release.

Danalynn Receives the Kutak Dodds Award

Fragile Gavel Award Presented to Judge Jeannine Barr

“Fragile as reason is (and as limited as the law is as the institutionalized medium of reason), that's all we have between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feelings.”
              --U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter

 At our Annual Celebration, GRACE presents the Judge Jay Burnett Fragile Gavel Award, recognizing courage in the fair administration of justice.  This honor is not awarded every year, but only when a member of the judiciary has distinguished him or herself by dispensing true justice in the face of tremendous pressures to the contrary.  To be honored with the Fragile Gavel Award, a judge must fairly and faithfully follow the dictates of the law even when the result will be unpopular.  We recognize this rare form of courage because others do not.  We bestow this honor because, as Theodore Roosevelt said, “Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.”  Judges who know this – and who, more important, summon the fortitude to act upon it – are all that stand between us and “the tyranny of… unbridled, undisciplined feelings”.

The Award takes the form of a glass gavel, symbolizing the fragility and perfection of true justice.  It is named after its first recipient, former Harris County District Judge Jay Burnett, who had the grit to demand a new trial for Calvin Burdine, whose lawyer had slept through parts of his capital murder trial.

Please Support GRACE

Dear Friends of Social Justice,

On September 21, 2006, Juan Leonardo Quintero Perez, an undocumented Mexican national, made a tragic mistake that changed his own life and the lives of many others forever.  Sitting handcuffed in the backseat of a police car about to be arrested for a minor infraction, he panicked and shot Houston police Officer Rodney Johnson seven times in the head and back.  Particularly in Houston, the death penalty capital of the world, these facts “sounded like a foolproof recipe for a death sentence.”   As C.O. Bradford, Houston’s former police chief, said: “if [the death penalty] is going to be utilized in Texas, I can’t think of a more appropriate case.”

However, on May 20, 2008, a Harris County jury stunned the city by returning a verdict of life without parole.  The jurors agreed with the prosecution that Mr. Quintero posed a future danger in prison, but nonetheless explained that they chose life because they “believe he has value.”   You can watch that remarkable moment here or read about it here. 

In the aftermath, journalists, lawyers and bloggers variously decried and saluted the verdict as “a victory,” “a travesty”, “sad”, “surprising” and “a shock.”  The media debated whether the verdict was the result of good lawyering or an indication of the public’s “growing weariness with the death penalty, and [a] maturing acceptance of LWOP as an alternative to death.”  Legendary Houston lawyer Richard ‘Racehorse’ Haynes opined that “the defense attorneys did a great job” and the Houston Press marked the significance of the verdict in its 2008 Best of Houston.  Victims’ rights activists criticized the jury for having “made a mistake.”  The jurors themselves explained simply that “[h]e’s loved by many of his family and friends…he has potential” and that even a “convicted cop killer . . . deserves mercy.”

Whether one lamented or celebrated the verdict, all recognized that the fundamental assumptions of capital cases in Houston had changed.  The verdict meant, at least, that there is no crime so despicable and no defendant so far beyond the pale that a jury, even in Harris County, will not choose to value life if they are given an opportunity to look beyond anger and grief to see the “diverse human frailties” of the man or woman whose life they hold in their hands.

However, that view – of Juan’s humanity – was made possible only by an independent defense team with resources beyond what are typically provided to capital defendants.  The American Bar Association Guidelines for the Representation of Counsel emphasizes the importance of independence in the defense function.  Virtually every study of indigent capital defense has likewise found that a defense independent of the judiciary is essential to real fairness.  But, in Harris County, there is no public defender system and elected judges choose the attorneys who appear before them.

Juan Quintero was represented by the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE), a non-profit law firm founded in 2002 to provide high quality capital defense to indigents facing the death penalty in Texas and Louisiana.  Thanks to private funding, Juan’s defense team had both the independence and the resources to mount systemic challenges to the Harris County process of selecting a jury pool and to lay bare the entrenched practice of racial discrimination in the exercise of peremptory challenges.  We litigated to get the time and expert assistance necessary for the development and presentation of Juan’s life history and engaged in extensive and aggressive pretrial motions practice, atypical for Texas state courts.  All of this created conditions that made the verdict possible – that allowed 12 citizens to walk a few steps in Juan’s shoes and decide for themselves if his life had value.

To give other clients that same chance, GRACE needs your help.  To protect our independence and maintain our standard of care while expanding to serve more clients, GRACE is embarking upon an individual donor program with the goal of raising $520,000.00 through 560 individual private donors over the next ten months.

GRACE began in 2002 when Calvin “Sleeping Lawyer” Burdine was returned to Harris County for retrial and Robert McGlasson, the habeas attorney who had fought for twenty years to overturn his unconstitutional conviction and sentence was denied appointment to represent him at trial.  Ironically, the Texas Fair Defense Act, which had been passed in response to the revelation that Calvin’s original attorney slept through portions of his capital trial, was invoked to deny Calvin his attorney of choice at retrial.  Calvin was adamant that he would not accept counsel chosen by the court.  Robert asked me to help.  I stepped in to represent Calvin on a pro bono basis, securing a life plea for him and founding the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE) in the process.

Because there is no statewide public defender system in Texas, GRACE became the first office here devoted to capital trial work, with the goal of bringing the successful methods of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center and other capital defender offices to Houston.

In the early days, GRACE was, as Sister Helen Prejean has said, just a “scrappy little group of volunteers” working out of the crowded attic apartment above my home.  We had no funding or resources to start, but capital defenders around the country chipped in to keep us afloat and local friends supported GRACE by donating computers, office furniture and supplies.  We staffed the office largely with interns who volunteered three to twelve months of time through the international internship program, Reprieve.  These young folks continue to bring their energy and passion for justice here because, although Texas makes up only 6.4% of the US population, it has been responsible for 37% of the executions carried out since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.  There are currently 393 men and women on death row in Texas, 12% of the national total.

And, Houston is the eye of that storm.  Harris County alone accounts for more executions than any state except Texas.  The rate of capital crimes does not account for this enormous disparity.  Rather, Texas is the capital of capital punishment due to a deadly combination of the twenty-year delay in implementing Supreme Court doctrine as to the development, admission and application of mitigating evidence, the historic lack of training for capital defense counsel, and the lack of any state-wide infrastructure for systemically correcting these problems.

For decades, Texas defied the constitutional principle of individualized sentencing with procedures that virtually guaranteed a death sentence for capital murder.  As a consequence, Texas judges, prosecutors and defense counsel developed practices and procedures for capital cases that were completely at odds with the rest of the nation.  And Texas never developed a pool of mitigation specialists, nor a pool of attorneys who specialize in penalty phase work.  Once the Texas legislature finally began to address the constitutional infirmities of the state capital sentencing statute, Texas had a lot of catching up to do.

GRACE has addressed these problems through the creation of our Harris County Capital Pretrial Project, a program funded by the Sisters of Charity, the Texas Bar Foundation and Equal Justice Works to provide consulting and assistance to appointed capital trial counsel.  As part of this program, we wrote the Texas Capital Trial Manual, which is now distributed to capital defenders around the state by the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and developed the only skills-based training for mitigation specialists in Texas.  Thanks to donations and volunteers, we have been able to contribute to every major development in capital defense since 2002.  We facilitated the neuropsychological evaluations of the juveniles on Texas death row for use in the Supreme Court litigation that ended the juvenile death penalty and we collaborated with mitigators all over the country in the development of the Mitigation Supplement to the ABA Guidelines.  We also helped craft Mexico’s lawsuit against the U.S. that revolutionized the representation of foreign national defendants and provided consultation to attorneys appointed to represent Mexican nationals at trial.

Alongside these developments, GRACE has consistently and successfully provided free, high quality representation to men and woman facing capital charges in Harris County.  In six years, GRACE has logged more than our fair share of victories, and mercifully few defeats.  Along the way, we have grown and changed and adapted to meet the opportunities generated by our successes and to fill the changing needs of capital defendants.  When we outgrew our little attic, private donors helped us raise the down payment for a home of our own, and volunteers from church groups and social justice organizations scraped, sanded, scrubbed and painted for weeks until we could move in.

Today GRACE pursues our mission of improving the quality of capital defense through four programming areas – direct representation, mitigation services, consulting and training.  Against all odds, we survived those first five years critical to any non-profit and expanded steadily year after year from a rag-tag crew of four volunteers to a staff of 12 full-time employees and four to six interns.  We defied the predictions of those who said appointed attorneys would never file the motions we wrote, that Texas judges would never fund our mitigation work, and that Harris County jurors would never choose life for an “illegal alien cop-killer”.
           
Now we have come to another critical juncture in GRACE’s development, another crossroads where our path meets a great opportunity to make an impact of critical strategic importance in the lives of all capital defendants through the representation of a few.

Thanks to the amazing work of the professors and students of the University of Texas Capital Punishment Clinic, the number of retrial/resentencing clients has recently outpaced our capacity to represent them on a pro bono basis.  In the past two years, we have found other ways to serve them – as appointed mitigation specialists to Johnny Paul Penry, Theodore Goynes and others; and as pro bono consulting counsel to assist appointed attorneys in negotiating settlements for Thomas Miller-El, LaRoyce Smith and others.  Thanks to grants from the Texas Bar Foundation and the Public Interest Law Foundation, we have been able to shift the focus of GRACE to serve a greater number of these clients.  But, the pace of reversals in the wake of Tennard v. Dretke continues to outstrip our capacity to provide even consulting services.

To meet this increasing need, we have developed a ten month plan to expand our Retrial Project through the addition of two new attorneys and a mitigation specialist, requiring an additional $18,300.00 per month in addition to the $11,700.00 per month that we must raise from private sources to maintain our current level of pro bono representation.  Housing these new staffers will require us to complete the expansion of our building at a cost of $160,000.00.

Thus, we are launching a new individual donor funding drive.  We are seeking 560 individuals willing to make a commitment to sustain GRACE as an independent, client-centered, non-profit capital defense office providing the highest standard of care to indigent defendants, especially those in “the capital of capital punishment”.

Here you will find an outline of our plan and the goals of this funding drive.  Please give what you can and please help us to build our community by introducing us to new friends.  

With gratitude,

Danalynn Recer
Executive Director
Gulf Region Advocacy Center