Post-conviction Challenges for 16 Death Row Prisoners in Mississippi

Knox v. Mississippi Supreme Court

Drinker Biddle, the Mississippi Center for Justice, and ABA Death Penalty Representation Project under the  auspices of the Barbara McDowell High Impact Pro Bono Project brought an action in the Mississippi Chancery Court on behalf of 16 inmates on death row against the state of Mississippi seeking to enforce the inmates’ right to competent counsel and access to the courts during their state post-conviction proceeding in order to remedy the denial of those rights in past proceedings while requesting a stay of execution for all of the inmates. The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of the Complaint, but important gains were nonetheless achieved as the decision was the impetus behind two subsequent Mississippi Supreme Court decisions that current and future death row prisoners have relied upon in bringing their individual successor post-conviction petitions challenging their convictions and sentences of death. The Knox decision established for the first time that a prisoner on death row can assert state ineffective assistance of post-conviction counsel claims in a successor post-conviction petition even if he/she had not raised such a claim in an earlier petition.