January 13, 2006

Death penalty opponent to deliver centennial lecture

Sean O’Brien

MARYVILLE, Mo. – Attorney Sean O’Brien, a well-known death penalty opponent noted for representing condemned prisoners and the socially downtrodden, will deliver Northwest’s next centennial lecture at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 15, in the J.W. Jones Student Union Ballroom.

Currently a visiting professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, O’Brien teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure and wrongful convictions.

He has represented death row inmates across the United States since 1983 and serves as director of the Public Interest Litigation Clinic, a non-profit law firm that specializes in representing poor people in both capital cases and non-capital cases in which an innocent person may have been wrongly convicted.

O’Brien’s better-known cases include U.S. Supreme Court victories in “Schlup v. Delo,” which preserved habeas corpus jurisdiction in situations where a prisoner may be innocent, and “Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal,” which preserved the power of federal courts to stop the execution of prisoners who become insane while on death row.

The PILC has freed a number of wrongly convicted prisoners, including Joseph Amrine, Steve Manning and Theodore White, Jr.

In addition to his death penalty work, O’Brien served as the Jackson County Public Defender from 1985-1989 and is past president of the Missouri Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He also served as chairman of the Missouri Bar Criminal Law Committee.

His numerous awards for work on behalf of those behind bars who are innocent, mentally ill or mentally retarded include the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2005), the “Jackson County Record” Legal Leaders Award (2005), the Lawyers Association of Kansas City Justice Charles Whittaker Award (2004), the “Missouri Lawyer Weekly” Lawyer of the Year (2003) and the ACLU Civil Liberties Award (2003).

O’Brien graduated from Northwest with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1977 and earned a J.D. from the UMKC School of Law in 1980. Last year he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Benedictine College.

O’Brien was nominated as a centennial lecturer by Northwest’s Department of English.

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