Scharlette Holdman

Uncommon card · No. 182875

Scharlette Jane Holdman (December 11, 1946 – July 12, 2017) was an American death penalty abolitionist, anthropologist, and civil rights activist. She earned the nickname "The Angel of Death Row" due to her work collaborating with attorneys representing death row inmates during the appeals process and defendants facing capital murder charges, especially in Florida in the 1980s. She also earned the nickname "The Mistress of Delay" for the impact her advocacy had on delaying the execution of death row inmates' sentences. Holdman called herself a "death penalty mitigation specialist" and also coined the term "mitigation specialist" to refer to people to whom defense attorneys would refer to gather information on a capital defendant's past that would help prevent them from receiving the death penalty. While Holdman was not an attorney herself, she counseled and guided capital defense attorneys, providing strategies for those attorneys to prevent their clients from receiving death sentences...

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