High Court Refuses to Hear Death Row Claims in Barbour v. Allen

High Court Refuses to Hear Death Row Claims in Barbour v. Allen

June 19, 2007

In May the Constitution Project filed an amicus brief in the case of Barbour v. Allen, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a constitutional challenge to Alabama’s failure to provide counsel to indigent death row inmates in state post-conviction proceedings. We are sorry to report that on Tuesday the Court declined to hear Mr. Barbour’s appeal. There are more than a dozen death row inmates in Alabama who do not have lawyers for these critically important state post-conviction proceedings. According to our brief, “Alabama is a unique outlier, in that it provides no legal assistance of any kind to capital defendants in preparing state post-conviction petitions.”