4.2.12 WC: 191694 Part III: Criminal Justice: From Sherlock Holmes to Barry Scheck and CSI Chapter 11: “Death is different”**: Challenging Capital Punishment From the beginning of my academic career, I taught classes involving the criminal justice system, but I had little practical experience as a criminal lawyer. My primary exposure to the criminal justice system had come during my clerkships, which focused on the death penalty and cases involving the interface of law and science. Not surprisingly, when I decided to obtain some practical experience, I was most comfortable beginning with such cases and causes. Cases involving death are different. I have litigated or consulted on more than three dozen cases involving the deaths or intended deaths of human beings. These cases fall into three categories: 1) Cases in which the defendant faced the death penalty; 2) cases in which the defendant was charged with killing someone; 3) cases in which the defendant was accused of attempting, intending or conspiring to kill. Whenever a defendant is at risk of losing his liberty, the stakes are high, but when he or she is at risk of losing life—-when the death penalty is on the table—the stakes are the highest. Even in murder or attempted murder cases in which the death penalty is off the table, the life and death nature of the case makes it different both in kind and degree. I take the hardest cases, often with low prospects for success. Usually, though not always, I am called after the defendant has been convicted and is seeking an appeal or habeus corpus, where the prospects are even lower. Yet, I have won nearly all of the death cases in which I played a significant role. In no case has one of my clients been executed or died in prison. The reason I have won so many death cases has more to do with science than with law. Most of my death cases were centered on forensics and applied science. Even before the popularity of such television shows as CSI, Bones and Dexter, I had dev