During my first law school summer, I represented inmates on death row in Florida. The moment I met my first client, shackled head-to-toe, I knew that this is exactly what I would do for the rest of my life. Over the summer, I grew to understand that death row often consists not of the worst offenders, but of the most absolutely vulnerable members of our society. I built relationships with my clients that will stay with me forever. For example, I met one man who was so illiterate when he was sent to death row that he could not read his grand jury indictment. While on death row, he taught himself how to read and write. And during our final visit together he recommended to me the book Courting Death because it was the best book on the death penalty that he had ever read and he believed it would make me a better lawyer. …show more content…
I was given the opportunity to write the first draft of a brief to the Florida Supreme Court asking for a case to be remanded back to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing because the defendant had proffered evidence challenging that the state had not met its harmless-error burden under Hurst v. Florida. It was an incredibly technical and challenging brief to write, but it’s hard to imagine many people getting that kind of experience during their first summer of law school. Additionally, I had multiple clients who are challenging the Florida Supreme Court’s partial-retroactivity doctrine, which has led to only some inmates getting retroactive Hurst relief. I was a member of the team who drafted the petition for certiorari challenging the constitutionality of this doctrine and I was able to write substantial sections of the argument. I was thrown into the fire and I learned how complex capital litigation is, let alone federal habeas