Clive Adrian Stafford Smith (born 9 July 1959) is a British attorney who specialises in the areas of civil rights and working against the death penalty in the United States of America. He worked to overturn death sentences for convicts, and helped found the not-for-profit Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in
New Orleans
New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...
. By 2002 this was the "largest capital defence organisation in the South.""The Great Defender" , ''
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
'', 11 March 2002. Retrieved 22 April 2016 He was a founding board member of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, based in
Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
, Texas.
In addition, he has represented more than 80 of the detainees held as
enemy combatants
Enemy combatant is a person who, either lawfully or unlawfully, engages in hostilities for the other side in an armed conflict. Usually enemy combatants are members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. In the case ...
since 2002 at the US Guantanamo Bay detention camp. As of February 2021, a total of 40 men are still held there.
In August 2004, Stafford Smith returned from the US to live and work in the United Kingdom. He is the co-founder of Reprieve, a human rights not-for-profit organisation. He left after 15 years, and has now established a new non-profit called 3DCentre. In 2005 he received the
Gandhi International Peace Award
The Gandhi Foundation is a United Kingdom-based voluntary organisation which seeks to further the work of Mahatma Gandhi through a variety of educational events and activities.
Aims and activities
As part of its mission, the Gandhi Foundation ...
.
Background
Born in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
and educated at
Old Buckenham Hall School
Old Buckenham Hall School (commonly known as OBH) is a day and boarding school, boarding preparatory school (UK), preparatory school with pre-prep for boys and girls in the village of Brettenham, Suffolk, England.
Founded in 1862, the school ha ...
and
Radley College
Radley College, formally St Peter's College, Radley, is a public school (independent boarding school for boys) near Radley, Oxfordshire, England, which was founded in 1847. The school covers including playing fields, a golf course, a lake, and ...
, Clive Stafford Smith studied journalism as a
Morehead Scholar
The Morehead-Cain Scholarship (originally the Morehead Scholarship) was the first merit scholarship program established in the United States. It was founded at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1951 and was named for its benefact ...
at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...
. He followed this degree with another in law at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in New York. He is licensed to practise law in the state of
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
.
Law career in US
Stafford Smith worked for the Southern Prisoners' Defense Committee, based in
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
, now known as the
Southern Center for Human Rights
The Southern Center for Human Rights is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to enforcing the civil and human rights of people in the criminal justice system in the South. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it has won cases in several states ...
, and on other campaigns to help convicted defendants sentenced to capital punishment. He was featured in ''
Fourteen Days in May
''Fourteen Days in May'' is a documentary film directed by Paul Hamann and originally shown on television by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1987. The programme recounts the final days before the execution of Edward Earl Johnson, an ...
'' (1987), a documentary showing the fortnight prior to the execution of
Edward Earl Johnson
Edward Earl Johnson (June 22, 1960 – May 20, 1987) was a man convicted in 1979 at the age of 18 and subsequently executed by the U.S. state of Mississippi for the murder of a policeman, J.T. Trest, and the sexual assault of a 69-year-old woma ...
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
. Stafford Smith had acted as Johnson's attorney and was seen trying to halt the execution. In a follow-up documentary, Stafford Smith conducted his own investigation into the murder case for which Johnson had been executed.
In 1993, he helped set up a new justice center for prisoner advocacy in
New Orleans
New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...
. Formerly named the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, it is now known as the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center (LCAC). He represented the paedophile Ricky Langley, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The jurors accepted that the accused was suffering from mental illness, but condemned Langley to capital punishment. The conviction was reversed, and Stafford Smith facilitated a meeting where Ricky apologised to the mother of his victim, Jeremy Guillory. Lorilei Guillory asked the DA to drop the death penalty, which he denied. She testified that Ricky should be in a mental hospital rather than prison, saying "I think he is mentally ill."
In 2002, Stafford Smith became a founding board member of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, a non-profit law office based in
Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
, Texas. It was designed to bring his legal methods developed at LCAC into the "capital of capital punishment", as Texas had the highest number of executions in the United States.
Guantánamo detainees
After returning to Britain, Stafford Smith worked as the founder of Reprieve, a British non-profit NGO that is opposed to the death penalty. During his career in the US, by 2002 Stafford Smith had lost appeals in six death penalty cases, but had won nearly 300, earning reprieves from execution for those convicts and exonerating a number of them.
From 2002 Stafford Smith volunteered his services to detainees held as enemy combatants at the United States detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay, established under President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
habeas corpus
''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
'' petitions and lawsuits on behalf of scores of detainees. His clients have included
Shaker Aamer
Shaker Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Aamer (born 21 December 1966)Jamil al Banna,
Sami Al Hajj
Sami Mohy El Din Muhammed Al Hajj ( ar, سامي محي الدين محمد الحاج), aka Sami Al-Haj (Khartoum, Sudan, February 15, 1969) is a Sudanese journalist for the Al Jazeera network. In 2001, while on his way to do camera work for th ...
Abdul Salam Gaithan Mureef Al Shehry
A total of 133 Saudi citizens have been held in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps at its naval base in Cuba since January 2002. Most had been swept up in Afghanistan following the US invasion in the fall of 2001, and they were cla ...
,
Moazzam Begg
Moazzam Begg ( ur, ; born 5 July 1968 in Sparkhill, Birmingham) is a British Pakistani who was held in extrajudicial detention by the US government in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, in Cuba, for ...
Jamal Kiyemba
As of October 29, 2022, This list of Guantánamo prisoners has the known identities of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, but is compiled from various sources and is incomplete. In official documents, the United States Depar ...
,
Binyam Mohammed
Binyam Ahmed Mohamed (, , born 24 July 1978), also referred to as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam Mohammed or Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, is an Ethiopian national and United Kingdom resident, who was detained as a suspected enemy combatant by the US Go ...
and Hisham Sliti. In a BBC interview, when asked why he was representing detainees, Stafford Smith answered that "liberty is eroded at the margins".
He returned to Britain in August 2004. That December he prepared a 50-page brief outlining a possible defences against execution for
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...
, arguing that the former dictator should be tried in the Hague under international law. On 29 August 2005, Stafford Smith addressed attendees at the
Greenbelt festival
Greenbelt Festival is a festival of arts, faith and justice held annually in England since 1974. Greenbelt has grown out of an evangelical Christian music festival with an audience of 1,500 young people into its current form, a more inclusive f ...
, a major UK Christian festival, telling them about the second hunger strike at Guantanamo. He warned the audience that prisoners were likely to die very soon. Due to restrictions imposed by the
Pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon (from the Greek πέντε ''pente'' meaning ''five'' and γωνία ''gonia'' meaning ''angle'') is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°.
A pentagon may be simpl ...
(DOD), lawyers' notes must be filed with an intelligence clearing house in Virginia, before release. Conversations with clients are considered classified, and cannot be discussed until they have full clearance. Smith had to wait until 27 August 2005 to publicly reveal that the hunger strikes had started again on 5 August 2005. A number of his clients, including Binyam "Benjamin" Mohammed and Hisham Sliti, participated in the hunger strikes.
In an interview broadcast by
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
television evening news on 9 September 2005, Stafford Smith said that the second hunger strike was to protest against the imprisonment of juveniles under the age of 18 in Guantanamo Bay.
Stafford Smith contributed to ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' with an opinion piece on the significance of the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
's 29 June 2006 ruling in ''
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
''Hamdan v. Rumsfeld'', 548 U.S. 557 (2006), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violated both the Uniform Code of Mili ...
,'' which found the
Combatant Status Review Tribunals
The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants". The CSRTs were estab ...
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
should have been secretly relieved that the more conservative members of the Supreme Court, who supported the administration's appeal against the lower court's ruling, were in the minority. He wrote:
In the end, I suspect there was a collective sigh of relief from the White House that the lunatic fringe did not prevail. The Bush administration has finally recognized that it must close Guantánamo but—for all that Bush bangs on about the importance of personal responsibility—it wanted someone else to take the blame.
Stafford Smith published a memoir about his experiences at Guantanamo, ''Bad Men: Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons'' (2007). It was shortlisted for the 2008
Orwell Prize
The Orwell Prize, based at University College London, is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity (Registered Charity No 1161563, formerly "The Orwell Prize") governed by a boa ...
for political writing. Interviewed by Jon Snow of ''
Channel 4 News
''Channel 4 News'' is the main news programme on British television broadcaster Channel 4. It is produced by ITN, and has been in operation since Channel 4's launch in November 1982.
Current productions
''Channel 4 News''
''Channel 4 News'' ...
'' on 26 March 2009, Stafford Smith said about the treatment of detainees, "I would go one step further: the torture decisions were being made in the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
, by the
National Security Council
A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a na ...
,
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former U ...
and
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice ( ; born November 14, 1954) is an American diplomat and political scientist who is the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 66th Uni ...
." He asserted that although the British had not carried out the torture, they were complicit in it. Stafford Smith concluded that, in trying to keep the torture allegations secret, the US authorities were "confusing national security with national embarrassment".
In July 2010, Stafford Smith accused former Foreign Secretary David Miliband of fighting to prevent the release of vital documents during the Binyam Mohamed case. On 9 June 2015, he told an audience that he had visited the facility 34 times. In 2013, he went on hunger strike as part of a campaign for the release of Guantanamo detainee
Shaker Aamer
Shaker Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Aamer (born 21 December 1966)
* Appointed
Officer of the Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
(OBE) in the 2000 New Years' Honours list "for humanitarian services in the legal field"
* Honorary Doctorate of Law by the
University of Wolverhampton
The University of Wolverhampton is a public university located on four campuses across the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, Shropshire and Staffordshire in England. The roots of the university lie in the Wolverhampton Tradesmen's and Mech ...
2001, for his work fighting the death penalty in America
* Lifetime Achievement Award from ''
The Lawyer
''The Lawyer'' is a legal business information product for law firm leaders, commercial lawyers, barristers
A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. The ...
'' Magazine (2003)
* Benjamin Smith Award from the ACLU of Louisiana (2003)
* Soros Senior Fellow, Rowntree Visionary (2005)
*
Gandhi International Peace Award
The Gandhi Foundation is a United Kingdom-based voluntary organisation which seeks to further the work of Mahatma Gandhi through a variety of educational events and activities.
Aims and activities
As part of its mission, the Gandhi Foundation ...
2005, for his work representing
Guantanamo detainees
As of October 29, 2022, This list of Guantánamo prisoners has the known identities of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, but is compiled from various sources and is incomplete. In official documents, the United States Depart ...
and campaigning against
extraordinary rendition
Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored Kidnapping, forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had t ...
.
* Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award (2008)
* International Freedom of the Press Award (2009)
* International Bar Association's Human Rights Award (2010)
* Honorary Doctorate by
Bournemouth University
Bournemouth University is a public university in Bournemouth, England, with its main campus situated in neighbouring Poole. The university was founded in 1992; however, the origins of its predecessor date back to the early 1900s.
The univer ...
(2011)
* Honorary Degree (Doctor of Laws) by
University of Bath
(Virgil, Georgics II)
, mottoeng = Learn the culture proper to each after its kind
, established = 1886 (Merchant Venturers Technical College) 1960 (Bristol College of Science and Technology) 1966 (Bath University of Technology) 1971 (univ ...
(2011)
Publications
*''Welcome To Hell: Letters and Writings from Death Row,'' edited by
Helen Prejean
Helen Prejean ( ; born April 21, 1939) is a Catholic religious sister and a leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.
She is known for her best-selling book, '' Dead Man Walking'' (1993), based on her experiences with t ...
, Clive Stafford Smith, and Jan Arriens (Northeastern; 2nd edition, 2004)
*''The Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Fighting the Lawless World of Guantanamo Bay'' (Nation, 2007)
*''Bad Men: Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons'' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007). Details his work for detainees in Guantanamo Bay, and criticises advocates of torture.
*''Injustice: Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America'' (Harvill Secker, 2012)
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
Mother Jones
Mary G. Harris Jones (1837 (baptized) – November 30, 1930), known as Mother Jones from 1897 onwards, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She h ...
Democracy Now!
''Democracy Now!'' is an hour-long American TV, radio, and Internet news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman (who also acts as the show's executive producer), Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. The show, which airs live each weekday at ...