MITIGATION SPECIALIST

What is a Defense Mitigation Specialist?

 

Mitigation investigation is both intensely personal and methodical. A mitigation specialist tells the story at all stages of the capital or non-capital case.  He/she assembles the pieces of a client's life, whether they're birth records, grade school report cards, Boy Scout memorabilia or prison disciplinary records. A competent mitigation specialist also knows how to communicate with a client and their family, sometimes about subjects such as child abuse and drug abuse.

 

Our mitigation has the power to resurrect a seemingly hopeless case, bringing new life into all aspects of the defense. Our goal is to assist defense attorneys in presenting their clients in the context of their entire life history, not just who they were on the day of the crime. Our life history narratives present the facts of the client's history while arousing compassion and understanding in the process. 

 

We portray the defendant embedded in his or her historical, biological, psychological and social context for the purpose of convincing fact finders to render a sentence of life in a capital case, or a less punitive sentence in a non-capital case. While the prosecution seeks to isolate clients from their histories and show them only in the context of their crime(s), Through the evidence gathered in our mitigation investigation, the defense is able to connect defendants and fact finders on the basis of their mutual humanity, regardless of the crime. As a mitigation specialist, we have the unique challenge of discerning the threads of those delicate human connections and weaving them together in a compelling pattern.  Our mitigation has the power to resurrect a seemingly hopeless case, bringing new life into all aspects of the defense.