A summer job!

One of the many exciting moments of my week in New Orleans was a phone call I got on Thursday morning, March 6, while working in a house in the Ninth Ward. The call came from the Northern Virginia Capital Defender's Office, a branch of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission. They offered me a 10-week summer internship! Because the opportunity was my top choice and because I have enough to think about, I immediately accepted, rather than take the customary time to think about it.

Public interest internships such as this one rarely come with a paycheck; I will not be getting paid — at least not by the NoVA CDO. Instead, William & Mary offers stipends to law students working at unpaid summer jobs through the Public Service Fund. I will complete the elaborate PSF application this weekend, with hopes of getting an award of up to $3,600, which would average to about $9 an hour for the 10-week internship.

I'm extremely excited about the job. The CDO was established a few years ago to provide lawyers to indigent defendants in capital cases. If the defendant cannot afford a lawyer to provide for his/her defense, the Capital Defender's Office provides a team of lawyers, paid for by the Commonwealth. In Virginia, when a prosecutor decides to seek the death penalty against a defendant, there are two phases to the trial. First, there is the murder trial, and a jury returns a verdict of guilty or not guilty. If the defendant is found guilty, then there is a second phase for sentencing.

The goal of the Capital Defender's Office is to ensure a proper defense for defendants with their backs against the wall. If there is a sentencing phase, the CDO offers what's called "mitigating evidence," such as a history of poverty, abuse and neglect, to show that the defendant's life circumstances played more than a supporting role in the crime that was committed. If a court finds the mitigating evidence compelling, the convicted defendant may receive a prison sentence, rather than the death penalty.

I have many more thoughts on the death penalty, which of course is a big reason why I applied for this job. I imagine I will have plenty of opportunity to elaborate on these issues this summer. My job, as I understand it, will be about two-thirds legal research and writing, and about one-third interviews. I will not have contact with any clients, but I will do interviews with people who know the clients well, to obtain the mitigating evidence needed at trial. I'm aiming to start on May 27, which would make my last day August 1.