When A Defense Attorney Feels Like She Enables An Executioner

One defense lawyer has an extraordinary record -- just not the kind that anyone with a capital conviction or charge against them wants to see.

Roderick Nunley sits on Missouri’s death row, scheduled to be executed tomorrow. One of his lawyers, Jennifer Herndon, has an extraordinary record — just not the kind that anyone with a capital conviction or charge against them wants to see. The Marshall Project reports:

If the execution takes place, one of Nunley’s attorneys, Jennifer Herndon, will have represented eight of the last 19 men executed in Missouri. And those eight men will have been executed in a span of four and a half years.

Is she (or more accurately her clients) just horribly unlucky? Maybe. But two of Nunley’s other lawyers filed a motion last week calling into question Herndon’s abilities (emphasis added):

On Tuesday, two other attorneys who once assisted in Nunley’s case filed a motion with the Missouri Supreme Court, asking that Nunley’s execution warrant be recalled because of “severe doubts” about Herndon’s fitness as a lawyer. Their motion cited The Marshall Project’s story, in which Herndon said, among other things, “I feel like I’m not doing the best work I can or should be doing for my clients right now.”

The profile, written in June by the Marshall Project, documents the stressful life of Herndon, which includes a separate career as an internet marketer and sending out saccharine sweet inspirational messages over social media. Quite a difference between “A flower does not think of competing with the next flower, it just blooms,” and “I feel like I’m not doing the best work I can or should be doing for my clients right now.”

The motion also alleges financial troubles, citing numerous liens for failure to pay taxes and suspension of Herndon’s law license for a time for that reason. (Though in the first article by the Marshall Project, she takes a flippant attitude towards that development: “They think I care,” Herndon says. “They always threaten to suspend my license — and I’m like, ‘OK, suspend my license. Then maybe my clients will live longer.'”) Her house was also foreclosed upon and she’s being sued as she’s failed to leave the premises.

In light of recent developments, Herndon has come back around to defending herself (emphasis added):

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I am doing everything I can for Roderick. Is it enough? No. Do I think I could save his life if I had all the resources in the world? Not without a miracle. Over the last two years, just considering my clients, I have seen the state execute two men who were incompetent, one who was mentally ill, one who was mentally retarded, and one who made such a transformation in prison that he would have made a fine next door neighbor. I have filed motions supported by case law the state couldn’t refute, hired experts whose opinions were uncontroverted, drafted clemency petitions the size of a book, and yet Missouri continues to execute men, no matter how legally or morally wrong it is under the specifics of each case. That’s why I want out. Not because I don’t care anymore, but because the system is broken here. I can’t fix it, and being a part of it makes me feel like an enabler of the executioner.

Even though Herndon is now standing beside her legal work, you still get a clear sense of the mental exhaustion and toll this difficult work takes on those who practice it.

The Burnout [The Marshall Project]
Doubting Jennifer Herndon [The Marshall Project]

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