Charles Ogletree, Death Penalty Scholar and Criminal Defense Advocate, Dies at 70

Charles Ogletree, Jr., a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for racial and crim­i­nal jus­tice, died on August 4, 2023, after a long ill­ness. As a tenured pro­fes­sor at Harvard University, Professor Ogletree spoke and wrote often about the death penal­ty and men­tored many stu­dents, includ­ing both Barack and Michelle Obama. In a 2014 Washington Post op-ed, he crit­i­cized the use of the death penal­ty in the United States, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness, brain impair­ments, or who suf­fer from the effects of severe trau­ma. He not­ed that ​“bar­ring the death penal­ty for intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and juve­nile offend­ers did not solve the death penalty’s dig­ni­ty prob­lem. Rather, those cas­es gave us cause to look more close­ly at the peo­ple whom we exe­cute. And when you look close­ly, what you find is that the prac­tice of the death penal­ty and the com­mit­ment to human dig­ni­ty are not compatible.”

Professor Ogletree grad­u­at­ed from Stanford University and Harvard Law School before begin­ning his career at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. After he left to teach at Harvard, he con­tin­ued work­ing for crim­i­nal and racial jus­tice, includ­ing seek­ing resti­tu­tion for sur­vivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and repa­ra­tions for the descen­dants of enslaved peo­ple. Professor Ogletree also expand­ed Harvard’s clin­i­cal train­ing efforts, espe­cial­ly in pub­lic and indi­gent defense. With co-coun­sel Steve Bright, Professor Ogletree argued and won a unan­i­mous rever­sal from the U.S. Supreme Court for a death-sen­tenced man in in Ford v. Georgia, a case where 90% of the Black venire mem­bers were struck by the prosecution. 

Professor Ogletree co-edit­ed sev­er­al books on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing Life Without Parole: America’s New Death Penalty?, The Road to Abolition: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States, and From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America. He was also a long­time board mem­ber at the Southern Center for Human Rights.

After the news of his death was released, Professor Ogletree was praised by many, includ­ing Barack and Michelle Obama, who described him as ​“unfail­ing­ly help­ful and dri­ven by a gen­uine con­cern for oth­ers,” and the Legal Defense Fund, which called him ​“an out­spo­ken expert and activist on civ­il rights, espe­cial­ly as it relat­ed to pub­lic edu­ca­tion and capital punishment.”