A man walked into a meeting room in the Bahamas trembling, convinced he was being taken to the gallows. He was actually there to meet his lawyer. Three weeks later, he was executed anyway. The law that might have saved him changed just three months later.
This week Rajan speaks with Saul Lehrfreund to find out how cases like this have defined his work as an international human rights activist and lawyer for over 30 years.
At 23, Saul was handed a one-way ticket to Jamaica. There, he began representing prisoners on death row and became involved in a landmark case that removed around 400 people from death row across the Caribbean.
Since then, as co-director of the Death Penalty Project, he has spent decades defending people facing execution across the world and helped achieve full abolition in three African jurisdictions.
But this is also a story about travel and the extraordinary contrasts it can reveal. How does a lawyer visit prisons unfit for human habitation, then return to a beach resort and eat breakfast among holidaymakers? How does repeatedly witnessing the final stages of another person’s life change the way you see the world? And what does Saul believe every policymaker should be required to do?
Check out more from Saul:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/saul-lehrfreund-3929911a4/
https://x.com/SaulLehrfreund
https://deathpenaltyproject.org/
https://www.instagram.com/deathpenaltyprojectuk/
https://www.facebook.com/DeathPenaltyProject/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-death-penalty-project/
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