Defender Toolkit
Here you will find sample legal briefs, clemency petitions, resources on narrative construction, litigation manuals, and factsheets relating to the defense of women and gender minorities on the following key issues: gender-based violence, sex trafficking, coercive control, trauma, mental health, intersectional discrimination, prison conditions, and working with the media. The materials in our toolkit are free and easily accessible, with the vision that equipping diverse defense communities with these resources will advance advocacy on behalf of criminalized women, transgender people, and gender minorities.
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Defending Women and Transgender Persons Facing Extreme Sentences: A Practical Guide
This guide takes advocates through how to build an inclusive team, how to conduct trauma informed, gender sensitive interviews, how to work with the media, and more. It is available for free download.
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Prison Conditions for Women Facing the Death Penalty: A Factsheet
There are at least 500 women on death row around the world, but they do not receive much attention in studies on the death penalty and the death row population. This factsheet examines the prison conditions that women on death row worldwide face, and includes profiles of women who were sentenced to death.
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Primer On Transgender Individuals Facing the Death Penalty
Capital punishment disproportionately targets socially marginalized individuals; it is no different for transgender people, who may face discrimination in every aspect of their lives. Accordingly, it is difficult to confirm how trans people who are on death row may have faced discrimination for being transgender in the criminal justice system. This factsheet provides an overview of the issues faced by transgender people who come into contact with the criminal justice system.
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Gendered Torture on Death Row
This factsheet takes advocates through the unique tortures women suffer while imprisoned. Understanding how conditions of confinement hurt women can help lawyers better advocate for their female clients.
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"No One Believed Me": A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty for Drug Offenses
In some countries, the overwhelming majority of women on death row were sentenced for capital drug offenses. This report examines how women’s gender shapes their pathways to drug offending and experiences in the criminal legal system, and how courts often ignore or disbelieve these gendered factors when imposing death sentences for drug offenses.
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Fati: An Innocent Woman Sentenced to Death for Terrorism After Being Falsely Accused by a Rejected Suitor
On death row since 2016, Fati was falsely accused of being a member of Boko Haram by a neighbor whose advances she had spurned. Subjected to beatings, denied access to an interpreter while she was interrogated, and represented by a lawyer who never spoke to her, Fati was sentenced to death after a trial rife with human rights violations.