- Collection:
- Social Change Collection
- Title:
- Millard C. Farmer oral history interview, 2012-05-11
- Creator:
- Farmer, Millard
- Contributor to Resource:
- Fowlkes, Diane L., 1939-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2012-05-11
- Subject:
- Lawyers
Legal assistance to the poor
Discrimination in Capital punishment
Criminal defense lawyers
Team Defense Project - People:
- Farmer, Millard
Mullin, Courtney J. - Location:
- United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Terrell County, 31.77688, -84.43692
United States, Georgia, Terrell County, Dawson, 31.77382, -84.448 - Medium:
- oral histories (literary works)
interviews - Type:
- Sound
Text - Format:
- audio/mpeg
application/pdf - Description:
- Born in 1934, noted death penalty defense attorney Millard C. Farmer, Jr. grew up in Newnan, Georgia. A University of Georgia graduate (1956), he worked in the family business and attended Woodrow Wilson College of Law during the evenings. He was admitted to the Georgia Bar in 1967, built a successful practice in Newnan, and was a co-founder of the Bank of Coweta there. Farmer also represented disadvantaged clients, and came to question whether African American defendants could be tried fairly before all-white juries. By 1970, he and his associates were challenging jury composition on the grounds of race. In 1976, he co-founded the Team Defense Project (TDP) with social psychologist Courtney J. Mullin and Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center. TDP was dedicated to the representation of indigent persons in death penalty cases and enjoyed many high-profile successes in the 1970s and 1980s, notably the case of the “Dawson Five” in Dawson, Georgia. Most of Farmer and Team Defense Project’s work was intended to bring attention to the inequities in the way capital punishment is used, and many of TDP’s litigation strategies, such as jury composition challenges and motion filings it developed, have become widely adopted tactics. Farmer and his colleagues taught and lectured on these strategies to numerous legal groups and audiences. An acknowledged expert in capital cases, Farmer has also represented clients bringing racial discrimination suits. He has received numerous honors from legal and civil liberties advocacy organizations.
Farmer further explains Team Defense’s vision that having adequate financial resources, equal justice, and skilled social scientists and lawyers could convince a jury that the death penalty was inappropriate. He later describes their growing understanding that a segment of the community also needed to be in their favor. He explains the importance of educating the community about the death penalty in advance of trial. He further describes the Dawson Five case and how Courtney Mullin and others used push phoning and polling to educate people about the issues surrounding the case. She helped turn the case into a media event which focused national attention on social injustices in the community. He provides detailed accounts demonstrating the Dawson Five’s innocence, their bond and pretrial hearings, trip to the Northeast, lower court’s dismissal, move to the Georgia Court of Appeals and its politically motived reversal, and then final dismissal. He points out the difficulties of other concurrent cases and renting motels and travelling with typewriters and a large copy machine, and shares side stories of some unsung persons who supported them. He describes the emotional difficultly of visiting the families of victims to explain that the death penalty is not the best way to administer punishment. He illustrates vignettes of how a difficult opposing prosecutor later testified on his behalf and a bad judge in the Dawson Five case still provided relief. He tells about Hans Ziesel privately convincing a judge to grant life sentences in a case and shares stories about outstanding accomplishments by interns. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/schange/id/23
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/schange:23/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Millard Farmer. Millard Farmer has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. Please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ for more information.
- Bibliographic Citation (Cite As):
- Millard Farmer, interviewed by Diane L. Fowlkes, 11 May 2012, Y2012-03, Social Change Collection, Special Collection and Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta
- Extent:
- 1 hour, 49 minutes of audio, and a 49 page transcript.
- Original Collection:
- Social Change Oral Histories
Social Change Collection - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
