Rare Breed - profiles of three defense lawyers who work death penalty cases, Stephen Bright, Bryan Stevenson, and John Holderidge

"They will provide training for local lawyers appointed to a capital case," said Holderidge, who described the creation of the program as "progress."

"But the funding is nowhere near enough for what's required. Mississippi has over 100 death penalty cases right now and 12 appeals."

Holderidge also wrote the leading brief and argued the case that led to the creation of the Louisiana Indigent Defense Assistance Board. Established in the mid-1990s, the board operates on an annual budget of $ 7.5 million.

Private attorneys defending poor clients are no longer confined to the $1,000 cap per trial. "It's a huge victory," he said.

Holderidge estimates that he was directly involved with 70 capital cases. Not every client was his friend.

Some resented, even appealed the life sentence they received in lieu of execution. But Michael Graham will always remain eternally grateful to "the pro bono lawyer who worked his tail off."

On March 3, 2000, after nine years of litigation, Holderidge obtained exoneration for the Virginia roofer who spent 14 years on death row for a crime he did not commit.

Taking on a death row case "really thrilled" Holderidge. But after working for a decade to increase funding for capital trial lawyers, he left the deep South and headed to Connecticut because of money. "I wasn't burned out by doing the death penalty stuff. I was just burned out by money."

He estimates that he spent half his time chasing down grant money, which was "never near enough" and trying to get judges to pay him.

"I never had a secretary. I never had a paralegal. I had a 30-year-old desk and a computer that shut down on me periodically." It was his wife's salary, he admits, that ultimately got him through those years.

Holderidge now works as a capital trial lawyer for Connecticut's public defender program. Stevenson and Bright continue to fight the good fight from their Southern bases. Although Bright has lobbied for death penalty reform, he believes capital punishment is a fundamentally flawed legal option.

"You cannot design a system that will fairly and rationally execute people," he said, quoting Supreme Court Justice Harry, Blackmun.

"In most [court] cases, the focus is very narrow and you are dealing with factual questions concerning who was at fault. But in a capital trial, the jury has to decide a much bigger issue: `Is this person so beyond redemption that they ought to be eliminated from the human community?' It's a boundless question."

Federal legislation impedes work of death penalty lawyers

Stephen Bright, attorney and death penalty expert, describes the 1990s as a time of "terrible problems" for capital trial lawyers.

In 1996, two Congressional decisions drastically changed the legal landscape. Early in the year, legislators cut all federal funding for death penalty resource centers and then, several months later, issued a bill severely limiting federal appeal options for death row inmates.

"It was a devastating one/two blow for the defense of capital clients," said Bright. Congress shortened the time in which death row inmates could file their federal appeals right after taking away the attorneys who could assist with those appeals, he said.