REPRESENTATION: Tennessee Inmate Faces Execution Because of Lawyer’s Failures

A forth­com­ing arti­cle in the ABA Journal reveals the trag­ic admis­sions of fail­ure by a well-known defense lawyer that led to a death sen­tence and poten­tial exe­cu­tion of Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman (pic­tured) in Tennessee.

Lionel Barrett, who rep­re­sent­ed Abdur’Rahman in 1987, now takes full respon­si­bil­i­ty for his lack of atten­tion to crit­i­cal details and for hav­ing his client end up on death row. Looking back on the case 24 years lat­er, Barrett said, ​“It was the per­fect storm. Everything I could have done wrong, I did … Abu-Ali is on death row because of me. I failed him.” 

Barrett was wide­ly rec­og­nized as one of the best crim­i­nal defense attor­neys in Tennessee, but he was over­worked and burned out, and his finan­cial trou­bles com­pelled him to accept more cas­es than he could han­dle. A series of interof­fice mem­os regard­ing Abdur’Rahman’s case reveals that Barrett was not ade­quate­ly pre­pared to try the case. He failed to file impor­tant motions that would have grant­ed him more time and resources to pre­pare for the case, and by the time pro­ceed­ings began, Barrett had not talked to a sin­gle eye­wit­ness, con­duct­ed any of his own inves­ti­ga­tions or explored evi­dence of his clien­t’s men­tal ill­ness. He also nev­er ordered test­ing on key pieces of evi­dence, includ­ing a coat owned by the defen­dant that alleged­ly had blood stains from the vic­tims. It lat­er turned out that the stains were paint from Abdur’Rahman’s work, and Barrett unknow­ing­ly allowed this crit­i­cal piece of excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence to become the most con­vinc­ing evi­dence of guilt. 

Barrett no longer prac­tices crim­i­nal law. Christopher Slobogin, a Vanderbilt University law pro­fes­sor in Tennessee who focus­es on crim­i­nal defense and men­tal health law said, ​“Under any stan­dard set by the Supreme Court, this case should be reversed. There is no ques­tion that this was inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel. The pros­e­cu­tor’s con­duct was clear­ly improp­er. The fact that the state and fed­er­al appel­late courts have not reversed is inex­plic­a­ble.” Abdur’Rahman’s case is now in the final stages of appeal.