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Brighouse lawyer to work with killers on Death Row
It may not be everyone's idea of a sabbatical, but a young Brighouse lawyer is off to America to spend five months trying to save Death Row prisoners from lethal injection.
Trainee barrister Roz Breaks will join the Office of Capital Post Conviction Counsel in Jackson, Mississippi, to assist attorneys appealing against death penalities. The work will involve interviewing imposed convicted killers in their cells.
And she plans to use her experience to highlight potential abuses of prisoners' rights.
Miss Breaks, 24, of Millroyd Mill, Brig-house, flies out this month and will return in June.
Her trip has been organised through Amicus, an international charity working that provides legal representation to prisoners facing execution.
Miss Breaks is part way through her barrister training and has been working across Yorkshire as a county court advocate for a London-based firm.
While doing research she learned of the opportunity to assist US attorneys.
"It seemed a really good challenge and an opportunity to compare both legal environments," she said.
Her role will involve assisting attorneys at hearings, conducting research and talking to prisoners.
"All the people we will represent are on death row and appealing the decision," she said.
Miss Breaks said US prisons could be intimidating. She would be screened from prisoners and make contact via a telephone.
She expects to find the US legal system more political – it has elected judges – and believes the odds are stacked against those she will represent.
The state has 61 men and three women facing death by injection.
One Mississippi prisoner has been on death row for 31 years and another in Georgia was killed last year 33 years after being sentenced to death.
Miss Breaks said it was inhumane to carry out death penalties on prisoners who had already served life sentences.
"That is a section of law that needs to be altered," she said.
Amicus sends over 20 interns annually to work alongside US attorneys and it also makes applications to the Inter-American Comm-ission of Human Rights regarding death penalty trials.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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