Partnering with ACLU affiliates in death penalty states, and with coalition partners nationally, CPP promotes both abolition and systemic reform of the death penalty process in the following ways:
Direct Representation: CPP takes on direct representation in cases that exemplify the inherent unfairness in capital cases. We work primarily in the courts of the South, in states that have historically been discriminatory or reluctant to provide adequate resources for indigent clients facing the death penalty.
Strategic Litigation: CPP is currently involved in capital litigation in courts throughout the country, including the United States Supreme Court. In general, its litigation focuses on: (1) innocent persons; (2) severely mentally ill persons; (3) persons who face execution because of abysmal legal representation; (4) persons who face execution because of systemic discrimination; and (5) improving the fairness of capital trials and appeals.
Systemic Reform: CPP works to reform the capital punishment process. In general, its initiatives focus on improving the quality of legal representation, enhancing the fairness of capital trials and appeals, and reducing the number of defendants who face the death penalty.
Public Education and Advocacy: CPP is actively engaged in repeal and moratorium efforts in a number of states. Elsewhere, CPP is working to curtail the use of the death penalty and oppose recent efforts to expand its use through public education and other advocacy efforts.
Capital Punishment Project Staff
Denny LeBoeuf, Director
Renee Rauch, Office Manager
Cassandra Stubbs, Staff Attorney
Brian Stull, Staff Attorney
Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney
Odalys Rojas, Mitigation Specialist
William Webster, Paralegal
American Civil Liberties Union
Capital Punishment Project
201 West Main Street, Suite 402
Durham, N.C. 27701
Tel: 919-682-5659
Fax: 919-682-5961
Biography of Denny LeBoeuf
Denny LeBoeuf is the Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, which works toward the end of the death penalty by supporting repeal and reform with public education, advocacy and targeted litigation. She has been a capital defender for over 20 years, representing persons facing death at trial and in post-conviction in state and federal courts, and she teaches and consults with capital defense teams nationally. She is particularly interested in the litigation of mental health and in the ways in which race and poverty increase the traumatic burden carried by many clients.
Ms. LeBoeuf also serves as the Director of the ACLU’s John Adams Project, assisting in the defense of the capitally charged Guantánamo detainees. She was a member of the 2003 Committee that formulated the ABA Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases, was Chair of the Orleans Parish Public Defenders Board 2006-2007, coordinating the reform and restoration of indigent defense in post-Katrina New Orleans, and was the founding Director of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana. She holds a J.D. from Tulane University and a B.A. from Hunter College.
Biography of Renee Rauch
Renee Rauch is the Office Manager for the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. Prior to joining the ACLU, Renee worked at Duke University Medical Center as a staff assistant in multiple departments. Her employment experience includes working with cancer and HIV patients and developmentally delayed children, as well as coordinating medical residents and staff. Her education has concentrated on the fields of education, medicine, and most recently, the law. Renee has been a passionate advocate over the past 20 years for the LGBT community, active in her communities in New Jersey and Tennessee, and currently in North Carolina.
Biography of Cassandra Stubbs
Cassy Stubbs is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. Cassy joined the project in 2006 and since then has served as lead and associate counsel on behalf of death row inmates and defendants in trials and appeals throughout the South, including Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. Her clients have included Levon “Bo” Jones, a North Carolina death row inmate who was exonerated in 2008 when the state dismissed all charges against him, and Richard C. Taylor, a severely mentally ill man who was sentenced to death after a sham trial in Tennessee, but who won a new trial on appeal and was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.
Cassy has also worked with numerous organizations and ACLU affiliates to file amicus briefs in capital cases in state and federal courts around the country. She has written policy papers, editorials and blog posts on a wide range of capital issues, such as the persistence of racial disparities in capital punishment and the fundamental flaws of purported claims that the death penalty deters future murders.
Before joining the ACLU, Cassy worked as a New Mexico State public defender in Aztec, N.M. Previously, she litigated employment discrimination and wage and hour cases in state and federal court with Bet Tzedek Legal Services in Los Angeles, and with the New York Civil Liberties Union in New York City. She served as lead counsel in multiple influential employment cases, including Wet Seal v. Ochoa, In Re Metro Fulfillment and Lochren v. Suffolk County.
Cassy is admitted to the bars of North Carolina, New York, New Mexico, and California. She received her B.S, with honors, from Brown University in 1996 and graduated magna cum laude from New York University School of Law in 2000. She served as a judicial clerk for Judge Harry Pregerson on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Biography of Brian Stull
Brian Stull is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, having joined the project in 2006. Brian has served as trial and appellate counsel in capital cases in North Carolina and Texas. Brian represented Levon “Bo” Jones an innocent man exonerated from North Carolina’s death row in 2008, and Adrian Estrada, a Texas man whose death sentence was reversed when the ACLU discovered he had been sentenced to death based on the false testimony of a Texas prison investigator. Estrada v. State, 313 S.W.3D 274 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010).
Brian has regularly contributed to ACLU amicus briefs filed in the United States Supreme Court and written numerous posts concerning capital punishment for the ACLU Blog of Rights, as well as other outlets. Brian has investigated conditions of confinement on Texas’s death row and advocated for needed improvements.
Before joining the ACLU, Brian worked for five years at the Office of the Appellate Defender (OAD) in New York City, where he represented indigent criminal defendants convicted of serious felonies on direct appeal and in post conviction and federal habeas corpus proceedings. During his time at OAD, Brian argued over 35 appeals.
Brian received a B.A., with high distinction, in 1993, and an M.S.W. in 1995, both from the University of Michigan. As a social worker, Brian worked with chronically mentally ill adults. Brian graduated cum laude from New York University School of Law in 2000, where he was awarded the Ann Petluck Poses Memorial Prize for outstanding work as a clinical student in the Capital Defender Clinic. He then served as a judicial clerk for federal magistrate judge Steven Pepe in the Eastern District of Michigan Federal District Court.
Biography of Anna Arceneaux
Anna Arceneaux is a staff attorney with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. At the CPP, Anna represents clients in capital cases at the trial and direct appeal levels across the South. Anna also has authored amicus curiae briefs in capital cases in state courts around the country in partnership with ACLU affiliates and other advocacy organizations, written blog posts and policy papers about the death penalty, consulted with capital defense attorneys and activists, and presented at training seminars for capital defense attorneys. In addition, she has worked with the ACLU Human Rights Program in drafting submissions to international human rights bodies concerning the administration of the death penalty in the U.S.
Prior to joining the ACLU, Anna was a fellow at the Fair Trial Initiative, where she assisted in the preparation of capital trial and post-conviction cases in North Carolina. Anna graduated from Columbia University School of Law in 2006, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar. She also served as Chapter Editor for the Human Rights Law Review/Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual. During law school, Anna interned at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center and participated in the school’s Human Rights Clinic. Anna also co-founded the Student Hurricane Network, a national network of law student volunteers created in response to the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which won Columbia’s 2006 Public Interest New Initiative of the Year Award. Anna graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2001 with a B.A. in English, Economics, and French from the University of Texas.
Biography of Odalys Rojas
Odalys Rojas is the mitigation specialist with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. She has extensive experience as a mitigation specialist and criminal investigator. Before joining the ACLU, Odalys worked for seven years as a mitigation specialist on capital trial cases at the Office of the Public Defender, in Orlando/Miami, Florida, and the Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco, California, where she investigated capital post-conviction cases. She has assisted with the representation of foreign national clients where her work has taken her to South and Central America and Mexico. She has also worked on employment discrimination and wage and hour cases for migrant farm workers while working at the Florida Rural Legal Services and the Legal Services Organization in Indiana. In addition, she has served as the director of the Huntingburg Organization of Latinos Americans in Indiana, where the focus was centered on immigrant’s rights.
Odalys is a first generation immigrant from Cuba. She attended Indiana University and pursued a career in social service working as a drug counselor in a soup kitchen and later worked with an organization providing social services to migrant farm workers and their families.
Biography of William Webster
William Webster is the paralegal for the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. Prior to joining the ACLU, William worked with several law firms in Washington, D.C. and Raleigh, N.C. His legal experience includes civil litigation involving insurance and medical malpractice matters, and assisting with the pro bono defense of misdemeanor criminal cases. William is a 1992 graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He is a member of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers.