Young lawyer quits to work on Death Row

A Young Scots lawyer has put her career in Scotland on hold to work on Death Row.

Lindsay Docherty, 26, is packing in her job with a thriving law firm to fight for America’s most notorious criminals. The Glasgow-based legal eagle says it’s been her life ambition to help abolish the death penalty.

“I am passionately against the death penalty regardless of what crimes people have committed. I realise it’s not a job that would suit everyone but I see it as the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Lindsay from Giffnock, East Renfrewshire, revealed she has used the deposit she’d saved for her first home to fund her six-month placement in New Orleans. She’s due to leave Scotland at the end of January.

“I’ll be working for Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in their offices and interviewing prisoners face-to-face on Death Row,” she added.

She believes her work for mental health law firm, Frank Irvine, in Glasgow’s tough Easterhouse estate, has prepared her. It involves working with clients in Carstairs high security State Hospital.

“I got the chance to work on Death Row after meeting Clive Stafford Smith, founder of the anti-death penalty campaign, Reprieve, at a book signing. He asked if I’d ever considered volunteering for them and I told him it was my dream.”

Lindsay was chosen from dozens of hopefuls all desperate to represent prisoners facing capital punishment in the US.

“Reprieve asked me at the interview, ‘Would you be able to work on Death Row?’ and I agreed immediately.”

Her current boss, solicitor Frank Irvine, paid tribute to his young protege.

He said: “Lindsay is more than capable of this. She has maturity beyond her years and a great future ahead of her. Spending time in one of the toughest law jobs in the world won’t be easy but it will be immensely rewarding.”

Lindsay admits it’s been a struggle finding the cash to pay for her six-month stay in the US.

“I’ll need much more than the money I put aside for my first home,” she admitted.

Prisoners in Louisiana are executed by lethal injection. The method of death was the electric chair until 1991. Some prisoners are on Death Row for more than 20 years before execution. Average age of a condemned person is 27 and 80% of the 88 prisoners on Louisiana’s Death Row are male. Louisiana is the only US state to have handed down death penalties to rapists in cases where the victims didn’t die.

Lindsay’s family are backing her but she’s keen to pay her own way.