Report from the Certiorari Clinic: Impressions of Routine Capital Cases

Abstract

The Certiorari Clinic at Northeastern University School of Law provides students the opportunity to do useful work in death penalty cases in an abbreviated time frame (an academic quarter) by focusing on a single step present in virtually every case- the petition to the United States Supreme Court for a grant of certiorari. Over the past decade, students have prepared petitions in more than one hundred capital cases from a dozen different states. This Commentary explains how this enterprise is organized and why it is worthwhile. I also report upon what a decade of wide but shallow exposure to capital cases reveals in terms of the evidence and advocacy necessary to secure a conviction and death sentences. Death cases are consistently, if infrequently, pursued and won on the basis of evidence that should, but apparently does not, create more than a lingering doubt about guilt. When it comes to the evidence necessary for conviction and sentence, death is not different.