• CRI 83C Wiese St. San Francisco CA 94103 • Phone: (415) 824-1424 • Fax: (415) 863-1382
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CRI was founded in 2007 by three capital investigators whose vision was to create an office, the staff of which would not only provide direct legal services for individuals facing the death penalty, but would also act as advocates for members of communities affected by the death penalty. Since our inception, our full time staff has expanded to include three culpability and mitigation investigators, an attorney, and a media specialist and educator. |
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CRI work with our clients' families and community members. This video clip shows a meeting between a former client and his family, arranged by CRI. |
Capital Cases
In the United States, thirty-six states and the federal government use the death penalty. Each jurisdiction has its own method of selecting cases
for capital prosecution and funding capital trials and capital appeals. CRI staff work primarily on federal capital trials and state and federal habeas
proceeding for inmates currently on California’s death row. The majority of our funding comes from direct services provided in these proceedings.
Other Cases
While CRI is primarily a capital defense office, we also work on cases which we believe will have a high impact on indigents, the mentally ill, or
the criminal justice system as a whole. To that end, we provide direct services in cases which require investigation and presentation of mental illness
and legal insanity. We have also taken international cases. In 2007, three members of our staff spent a month in Rwanda investigating fair trial issues
of individuals accused of leadership roles in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Art Program/Impact
Impact is a video documentary that tells the story of familiy members (and others) of people who are, or were, facing the death sentence.
We are working with the mothers, partners and children of prisoners on death row to produce a short animated video entitled Impact. Impact creates a
picture of these families’ experiences in their own words. We see this project as an opportunity to articulate the complexity of each family’s experience.
Working with each family we are layering their narratives and build a visual language mirroring the complexity of each story. Impact is a collaboration
with Dee Hibbert-Jones, assistant professor of art at University of California, Santa Cruz, and her student. We are seeking to involve youth from the
community to take part in this project, and assist them to acquire the artistic and technical skills involved in this production.
Impact is partially funded by Institute for Research in the Arts, University of California, and artist grant, San Francisco Arts Commission.