Southern Center for Human Rights papers, circa 1980-2005.

ArchivalResource

Southern Center for Human Rights. Southern Center for Human Rights papers, circa 1980-2005.

Southern Center for Human Rights papers, circa 1980-2005.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/471480278

The collection consists of files concerning the Southern Center for Human Rights defense of Georgia death row inmates Tony Amadeo and Jimmy Lee Horton. Two boxes are devoted to records for the Carzell Moore case. Partial records from other Georgia cases (George Dungee, Eddie Finney, and Johnny Mack Westbrook among them) are also included as parts of the records of these files. The remaining files are general death penalty or criminal justice files or concern the Center's lobbyist role. Specifically, a number of files were compiled in support of "racial justice acts" to constitutionally bar racial bias in seeking death penalties. Other files were compiled in opposition to the federal habeas corpus limitations proposed and later enacted in the US Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The files contain some official correspondence between center attorneys and Georgia courts or other attorneys. There are also news clippings and photocopies of evidentiary documents introduced in trial proceedings. In general, the materials are "working" informational files, often copies of court documents or evidentiary documents. Their usefulness is chiefly their supply of details about the particular "racially-stacked jury" and "electric chair" cases above, and as evidence about the scope and methods of the Center's efforts in defending indigent capital punishment defendants and in lobbying for and against state and federal legislation affecting the criminal judicial process.

11.0 linear feet.