FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
CONTACT: Kristin Houlé Cuellar, TCADP Executive Director
512-552-5948 (cell); kristin@tcadp.org
Civil rights advocates, journalists, and capital attorneys to address TCADP 2021 Annual Conference
Virtual event will honor three capital defense attorneys for their zealous representation of individuals on death row in Texas
(Austin, Texas) — Advocates from across Texas will gather online this Saturday, February 27, 2021 for the 23rd annual conference of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP). This event, Reckoning with Injustice in the Death Penalty and Beyond, will address systemic racism in the criminal legal system as well as the injustices and inequities exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic.
The panelists — journalist Keri Blakinger, attorney Shawn Nolan, and activist Delia Perez Meyer — will discuss the impact COVID-19 has had on use of the death penalty and on incarcerated individuals and their families. Capital defense attorney and civil rights advocate, Henderson Hill, will deliver the keynote address on this moment of reckoning with racial injustice.
The virtual awards ceremony will honor three capital defense attorneys whose zealous advocacy has spared numerous individuals from execution and impacted the future of the death penalty. We will present Appreciation Awards to the following individuals:
- Cliff Sloan, who led the legal team for Bobby Moore and argued Moore v. Texas at the U.S. Supreme Court. The case has fundamentally changed the way the State of Texas assesses intellectual disability claims in capital cases.
- Gretchen Sween, who devotes her practice to defending indigent individuals in death penalty cases. In June 2020, she secured a rare win at the U.S. Supreme Court in the capital case of Terence Andrus. Andrus was convicted and sentenced to death in Fort Bend County in 2012 after his trial counsel failed to present or even investigate readily available mitigating evidence of his troubled upbringing and mental health issues.
The David P. Atwood Founder’s Award, which honors those who have made a lifelong commitment to justice, will be presented to defense attorney Dick Burr in recognition of his decades of advocacy on behalf of individuals on death row in Texas and, particularly, his recent efforts on behalf of Billy Joe Wardlow and César Fierro.
Individuals who will be leading workshop sessions during the conference include the following:
- Ngozi Ndulue, Senior Director of Research and Special Projects for the Death Penalty Information Center and author of Enduring Injustice: The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty
- Jordan Rubin, a reporter at Bloomberg Law, where he covers the Supreme Court, capital punishment, and other legal issues.
The TCADP 2021 Annual Conference will take place on Zoom from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM Central Time on Saturday, February 27, 2021. The keynote address and awards ceremony will take place from 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM. Contact TCADP Executive Director Kristin Houlé Cuellar at kristin@tcadp.org to receive the Zoom links to join live or to request the recordings of any sessions.
The full schedule and detailed information about the panelists, keynote speaker, and award recipients is available here: https://tcadp.org/what-we-do/annual-conference/.
TCADP is a statewide, grassroots advocacy organization based in Austin.
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