Hello everyone,

I hope that since my last posting, you have been doing well!

So I wanted to write and give you an update on my coop. I decided to go to an organization that deals with criminal defense in the context of the death penalty. I am going to the Southern Center for Human Rights to work on appeals for death penalty defendants. I know - I go from one extreme to the other, don't I? I am very excited to be going to this organization. I know it's weird to use the word exciting in the realm of the death penalty, but to me, it's going to be exciting.

I became interested in death penalty work after working on my Advanced Legal Research project this quarter. Essentially, I am working on a project that looks at how insular minorities, (and in my case, I am looking at women and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender ("GBLT") people) intersect with the death penalty. I have found some incredible research that suggests that prosecutors use sexuality in an arguably discriminatory manner when seeking the death penalty for gay defendants, and that female defendants are often not sentenced to the death penalty because of the fact that death penalty statutes purposely limit the realm of the death penalty to crimes that men are more likely to commit. I am still in the thick of my research, but it's fascinating.

So, I am co-oped everyone and ridiculously excited about the fact!