Campaigns
Campaigns
What means campaign?
In cases of blatant injustice - where the death sentence is not justified based on the involvement or the criminal responsibility according to international or even US law and also in cases of possible innocence - ALIVE offers special support in form of a campaign.
How can a death row prisoner get a campaign?
If the inmates wants our direct support for his/her case, he/she can apply for a campaign. That such a case the prisoners gets a questionnaire to fill out. This questionnaire gives us a first impression about the case and brings us in contact to the attorney. If the case meets the criteria of a campaign, we get in contact with the legal team of the prisoner and claim the legal documents.
Then we study we documents and establish a dossier, that makes the key-points of the case visible. This is the duty of the ALIVE board. Even though the board members are not licensed attorneys in the US, they got the needed knowledge during all the years of working in the field of the death penalty and by self-studying the law.
Self-studying contains among other things intensive studies of US death penalty law and of all relevant factors. Sources were the FindLaw Cooperation and the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, DC. We have also studied death penalty precedence cases. Petra E. Herrmann published a dictionary explaining terms of the US criminal law in German language. Furthermore the reading of trial transcripts and appeal writs to countless witness testimonies helped to get the needed knowledge.
We work together ALWAYS with the particular attorney and also investigators/experts.
If the board comes - after reviewing the case documents and talking to the attorney of the condemned - to the conclusion that a case matches the criteria for a campaign AND we have the appropriate resources for another campaign case, the members meeting gets introduced to the case and decides about an adoption of the prisoner as a campaign. In urgent cases the board is able to decide about an emergency-adoption.
What is the support ALIVE can offer to campaign prisoners?
ALIVE e. V. provides to the campaign prisoners a website - with an own name domain - with information about the case. This website is supposed to gain publicity for the case and to build up a support-team for the prisoner.
The prisoner gets flies that give a short overview about the case. He/she can have business cards with address and website on it.
On ALIVE events we hand out the fliers and the case is always present within our public relations work. If needed we prepare petitions.
All these things are completely free of charge for the prisoner.
Each prisoner has a campaign manager. This person stays in touch with the inmate. Visits with campaign prisoners, the attorneys and family members have highest priority during ALIVE trips to the US.
Further projects are possible according to agreements between the inmate and the attorney.