Become a Fellow

Each year, Reprieve conducts an annual open competition for a limited number of Reprieve Fellowships, thanks to major donations from Keymed,  the Roddick Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust and the Law Society, among others.

These Fellowships are awarded to outstanding individuals with a proven commitment to capital defence work. The recipients start up projects or take up positions in non profit host organisations in the US working on behalf of poor people facing the death penalty.

Fellowships: What do Fellows do?

Reprieve Fellows start projects or begin careers fighting for the lives of people facing the death penalty in some of the most under-resourced death penalty jurisdictions in the US.

The Fellows are dispatched each year to their chosen battlegrounds to work extraordinarily long hours, knocking on doors looking for reluctant witnesses, digging their way through archives and storage rooms in sleepy courthouses searching for that critical missing piece of evidence, driving the huge distances between prisons, drafting legal briefs and falling asleep over the photocopier at four in the morning. Each of these rookie lawyers or investigators may find themselves the only thing standing between a prisoner and the execution chamber.

Fellowships: Becoming a Fellow

Candidates must submit applications to Reprieve for projects or positions devised by the fellowship candidate and the proposed host organisation. Reprieve Fellowship candidates can be from anywhere in the world, including the US. To be successful, an application must demonstrate an excellent match between the problem to be addressed, the experience and qualities of the candidate, and the commitment and ability of the host organisation to support the project or position. The criteria and priorities of the Reprieve Fellowship Programme reflect the needs of the death penalty defence community in the US, which includes not only the need for new leaders to undertake strategic projects, but also for attorneys and investigators to provide direct representation services in jurisdictions where the state fails to provide adequate funding for counsel.

Fellowships: Rest of the world

As more resources become available, Reprieve will offer more Fellowships, providing seed capital to start projects and careers in other parts of the world where the death penalty is still practised and where the resources for representation of death penalty defendants are limited. Fellowship applications for countries other than the US are accepted by invitation only. If you are interested in the possibility of a Fellowship in other parts of the world, please contact Reprieve.

Reprieve is always searching for more sponsorship to expand the Fellowship programme; each fellowship year costs £25,000. For more information about sponsoring a fellow or applying for a fellowship in the USA, please email info@reprieve.org.uk