Civil Liberties & Human Rights

About

Provided by Simons Muirhead Burton

Housed within the offices of Simons Muirhead Burton, The Death Penalty Project (DPP) provides free legal representation and assistance to individuals facing the death penalty and other vulnerable prisoners. Through the DPP, SMB has provided free legal representation to individuals facing the death penalty for more than three decades. Today, the DPP works in over 30 countries around the world, using the law to protect the human rights of prisoners and achieve fairer criminal justice systems.

The DPP provides free representation to indigent prisoners in criminal and constitutional appeals before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, which is still the final Court of Appeal for most of the English-speaking Caribbean. It also appears before international courts and tribunals and assists and supports lawyers working on capital cases in many other Commonwealth countries.

The DPP provide access to justice through free legal assistance, principally at the appeal stage. They also bring strategic litigation to strike down cruel, unfair and inhuman laws, and in doing so create lasting legal precedents. The DPP’s legal work has saved thousands of prisoners from execution.

The DPP is run by co-Executive Directors Saul Lehrfreund and Parvais Jabbar both experts in representing prisoners under sentence of death, and specialists in the fields of domestic and international human rights law.