In the next instalment of our special series of LexisNexis Legal Awards Profiles, we talk to Simone Abel (pictured) and Harriet McCulloch, the director and deputy director of human rights organisation Reprieve, which took home the In House Team of the Year Award
What was most satisfying about seeing your work recognised at the LexisNexis Legal Awards this year?
Harriet: The profile the award will give to the challenges facing the people we assist. Reprieve provides free legal and investigative support to some of the world’s most vulnerable people: those facing execution, and those victimised by states’ abusive counter-terror policies—rendition, torture, extrajudicial imprisonment and extrajudicial killing. In many cases, a public profile is the only thing stopping the state from killing the people we support. In a 24-hour news cycle it’s hard to keep our cases in the public eye—awards like this help hugely.
Simone: The award gives us the opportunity to highlight the countless cases of the people Reprieve assists—each of which has left an indelible mark on us and motivates us to continue seeking justice—and to thank the extended team that makes an incredible contribution to our ability to provide strategic legal support on those cases. This team includes our in-house lawyers, and our fantastic pro bono partners. Both are always ready to chip in on a huge variety of very challenging legal work.
What were your routes into the profession?
Harriet: I studied English at University College London, and after graduating in 2008 did a three-month internship at a capital defence law centre in New Orleans. After spending three months supporting lawyers representing people facing the death penalty in Louisiana and Mississippi, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. Over the next five years I took the Graduate Diploma in Law and the Legal Practice Course and spent a year as a fellow in New Orleans and a year and half as an investigator with Reprieve in London. I trained at Allen & Overy and after qualifying spent eight months working on a capital sentencing project in Malawi before joining Reprieve in my current role as Deputy Director.
Simone: I studied Arts/Law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. As part of my studies, I spent a semester as a student editor at the Australian Journal of Human Rights, as well as assisting with a variety of pro bono initiatives supported by the law school. During my degree, I did an exchange programme at the University of Texas at Austin Law School. There I was the victim of drink-driving, and, being a foreigner, my case was ignored by the police. I was fortunate enough to receive pro bono legal representation. The man who successfully represented me, Broadus Spivey, is a source of inspiration to me, and a committed human rights advocate. He taught me a great deal about our responsibilities as lawyers.
After graduating and working in two international law firms, King & Wood Mallesons (then Mallesons Stephen Jaques) and Cravath, Swaine & Moore, I decided it was time to take a leap of faith and pursue the thing I was most passionate about. Luckily, Human Rights Watch in New York gave me that opportunity. I then went on to be the executive director of René Cassin, a human rights NGO in London campaigning on issues such as promoting and protecting the Human Rights Act, asylum seeker rights, and gypsy and traveller rights. In 2012, I graduated with a masters in human rights law, and shortly after I moved to Reprieve to focus on legal and operations work in an organisation that is dedicated to challenging extreme human rights abuses.
What have been your biggest career challenges so far?
Harriet: In 2007, Malawi abolished the mandatory death penalty. In 2010 the Supreme Court of Appeal held that all prisoners originally sentenced to the mandatory death penalty should have the opportunity to have their sentence reconsidered by the trial court. Almost 200 prisoners were eligible to have their mandatory death sentence reconsidered at a hearing where a high court judge would consider the circumstances of the offence and the offender.
In late 2014 I joined the Malawi Human Rights Commission as a fellow and worked with organisations and government departments across Malawi’s criminal justice system to prepare for and organise these sentencing hearings. This was a huge undertaking, Malawi’s criminal justice is critically under-funded and preparation for a capital sentencing hearing (all the prisoners risked being sentenced to the death penalty again) is complex and time and resource-intensive.
As a fellow, I supported paralegals to conduct mitigation investigation and prisoner interviews, reviewed case documents, carried out legal research, drafted defence submissions, and liaised with defence, prosecution counsel and judicial support staff to organize the hearings. When I returned to the UK and joined Reprieve as a Deputy Director, I stayed involved in the project, supervising Reprieve fellows in Malawi and caseworkers in London.
Sentence hearings started in February 2015 and continued into mid-2018. Over 150 prisoners were re-sentenced. In over 120 cases, the judge found that the prisoner’s rights had been so gravely breached that she or he should be immediately released or that the appropriate determinate sentence was one that resulted in immediate release. None of the prisoners were resentenced to death.
The capital sentencing jurisprudence developed through these sentencing hearings establishes progressive precedents for sentencing people wrongly sentenced to death as children, people with mental health issues and intellectual disability, among other issues, which will guide courts in Malawi, retentionist countries across the region, and around the world to hand down a sentence less than death.
It was a huge challenge to ensure that over 150 prisoners had a sentencing hearing in which their rights were upheld and justice was done for the prisoners and the communities impacted by the offence. Rising to this challenge, paralegals, lawyers, judges, civil society, mental health clinicians, police and prisoner officers, community leaders and others across Malawi, Professor Babcock of Cornell Law School and her students, and my Reprieve colleagues worked together to demonstrate the possibility of reform, redemption and forgiveness. It was my privilege to be involved.
Simone: My biggest challenges and successes occur behind the scenes. Success in my role is often defined as the continued ability of Reprieve to focus on our cases and the issues that they present because we have taken all necessary steps to ensure that we are in a position to properly assist—through casework, advocacy and outreach—those whom we exist for. Often this involves challenging work with regulators, governments, funders and other key stakeholders. Reprieve believes that liberty is eroded at the margins, and that means we often work with some of the most disenfranchised people in society, as it is in their cases that human rights are most swiftly jettisoned and the rule of law is cast aside. It can be difficult to operate in an environment where you are providing legal support to someone that the state has designated as being utterly expendable, or worse. Sometimes, doing such work can put you or your colleagues at risk. It is challenging carrying that, and sometimes it feels as though we are at the edge of the precipice, but the art is in knowing how far we can step.
Which person within the legal profession inspires you most?
Harriet: Professor Sandra Babcock, a clinical law professor at Cornell Law School, is a long-time friend of Reprieve and supervised me as an investigator working on death penalty cases in the US and as a fellow in Malawi. Professor Babcock has dedicated her career to defending people facing the death penalty and mentoring young capital defense lawyers. I feel very lucky to be among the young lawyers mentored and inspired by Sandra.
Simone: I am inspired by Albie Sachs, activist and former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Albie was a lawyer in exile during apartheid, and was nearly killed by a car bomb, but went on to help draft the democratic constitution of South Africa, and to push the law to new places there. I have seen him speak a few times and I am always moved by how he talks about ‘the soft vengeance of living under the rule of law’. We take a lot for granted, even when it is being eroded. At Reprieve, we meet people who have suffered in ways that we can’t even imagine, and yet somehow they have the capacity to forgive, and to advocate for the rights of others. For example, Abdul-Hakim Belhaj, Fatima Boudchar, Ibrahim Halawa, Andy and Yemi Tsege, and many more. I am privileged to have met some of those whom we’ve provided legal, investigative and advocacy support to. In addition to the outcomes we seek for them—which are paramount—their stories help to unlock otherwise intractable issues so that we can assist others affected by extreme rights abuses.
I am also constantly inspired by the many lawyers at firms who selflessly provide pro bono assistance to Reprieve. It wouldn’t be right to single any out, because they have all made a really significant impact in promoting human rights and challenging injustice.
If you weren’t a lawyer, what would you choose as an alternate career?
Harriet: Mental health is a very important issue in the administration of criminal justice. Mental health conditions can impact access to justice and access to the courts. International and the national law of many countries bans the imposition of the death penalty on the mentally ill and those with intellectual disability. As a lawyer, I’ve worked closely with psychologists and psychiatrists on death penalty cases and have seen mental health experts use their skills and knowledge to make a real difference to people’s lives. I would have loved to have explored a career in mental health.
Simone: I would probably have embarked on a career in medicine. In Reprieve’s work we often engage with those from the medical profession who are able to inform the debate about issues such as the impact of force-feeding at Guantánamo, the impact of torture on mental and physical health, the impact of intellectual disability on culpability, and much more. There are lots of ways to achieve meaningful change and advancement of human rights, and the law is only one avenue.
Who are your favourite fictional lawyers?
Harriet: I think it would have to be Rumpole. Diane Lockhart and Lucca Quinn from The Good Fight come a very close joint second.
Simone: Show me a person who doesn’t love Atticus Finch!
What change would you make to the profession?
Harriet: Access. The cost of training and the role that personal networks play compound existing structural inequalities in wider society and mean that the profession isn’t open to all.
Simone: I would like to see a greater commitment by government to funding public interest cases. Legal aid cuts have decimated access to justice and reinforced the socioeconomic divide, making rights unenforceable for those who are most likely to have them infringed.
How do you relax?
Harriet: Going to nice restaurants and to the cinema. I love the Rio Cinema in Dalston.
Simone: Hanging out with my sons is a great antidote to stress, even if it’s exhausting! I also love being outdoors and taking photos of cityscapes and landscapes.
Entries for the LexisNexis Legal Awards 2019 are now open, and should be submitted at www.lexisnexislegalawards.co.uk by the closing date of Friday 16 November 2018. The awards ceremony will be held at the Sheraton Grand London Park Lane on Wednesday 13 March 2019.
