Fighting the Good Fight: Ken Rose
BU Law alum shares his passion for public service.
From the death penalty and human trafficking to poverty and discrimination, many Boston University School of Law alumni are called to work for change, making big impacts in the public sector, government, and nonprofit worlds. The inspiration to serve in these areas arises from many places. For a number of these alumni, the passion for social justice is informed by their experience in law school.
For a recent Record alumni magazine, BU Law sat down with four alumni to discuss their law school experiences and what led them to public service. We highlight here our conversation with Ken Rose (’81), who recently retired from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
Ken Rose’s original career plan was military service, but after two years at the US Military Academy in West Point, he realized that it wasn’t the right fit. Finishing college in St. Louis, the New Orleans native came to BU Law for its “excellent academics” and to see more of the country. He also came for what was then a more unique opportunity at law schools: law clinics.
At the time, he says, clinical programs were a significant change from traditional law school education. “They’ve since become more popular around the country, but when I was looking at schools, BU Law was one of the few with dedicated clinical programs that allowed students to get hands-on experience in public interest work.” Participating in both a legal services and criminal law clinic, Rose says, was “incredible preparation for a career in public interest law.”
As he approached graduation, he recalls discussing job options with Professor of Law Emerita Eva Nilsen, who suggested he look into a small nonprofit in Atlanta called the Team Defense Project that represented death row inmates. “I drove down over winter break and was hooked,” he says.
Death penalty litigation was a “chaotic field” in those days, explains Rose. “At Team Defense, we were doing so many cases in multiple states that it was about triage,” he says. “These cases typically had a low level of representation because there was almost no money to support them. For example, Mississippi had a rule that attorneys could not get paid more than $1,000 for a trial case. The money across the South was pitiful, especially considering the complexity of the cases and the need to pay experts and obtain additional support.”
Funded by charitable donations, the group’s initial strategy was to engage in complex and protracted litigation to deter states from pursuing the death penalty. “When that didn’t work, we consoled ourselves by focusing on helping individual clients—and we won many of those cases,” says Rose.
Three years later, Rose and his wife moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where he opened a law firm and helped launch the Mississippi Capital Defense Resource Center, where he served as director before moving to North Carolina for his wife’s job.
A new dad, Rose stayed home with his son while studying for the North Carolina bar and eventually opened a law office in his home, where he took on direct appeal cases. In 1996, he became director of North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation. After 10 years as director, he transitioned to senior staff attorney to focus on representing inmates on death row.
Rose says his work is divided into two areas: legislative efforts and defense cases. On the legislative side, he says that one of the “most important things” he has done in North Carolina is his work on the Racial Justice Act.
“The groundbreaking law, which was the first of its kind nationwide, allowed death row inmates to bring forward evidence that their sentences had been tainted by racial bias. Because of the law, the role that race plays in capital trials was quantified and brought to light for the first time,” he says, noting that a study showed that African Americans were systematically denied the right to serve on capital juries in North Carolina. “We found undeniable evidence that racial bias is still a huge factor in deciding who is sentenced to death in North Carolina.”
As for public defense cases, he’s worked on too many to count during his 35-year career representing low-income clients on death row, many of whom are mentally ill and intellectually disabled. One of the more prominent cases was his defense of Levon “Bo” Jones, who was convicted of a 1987 murder. The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates, by John Temple, describes Rose’s work on this case, which resulted in the release of Jones in 2008 after 15 years on death row.
Another notable case involved Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, brothers who were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1984. The complex case involved inconsistent admissions, intellectual disabilities, and newfound DNA evidence. Both were exonerated in 2014.
“After 35 years of representing people on death row, I’m grateful to Professor Nilsen and the law school for leading me in that direction. They knew who I was and what I cared about and helped me to find a good fit,” says Rose, who was awarded the National Legal Aid & Defender Association’s 2015 Kutak-Dodds Prize for his “extraordinary commitment to defending indigent clients facing the death penalty.”
This feature originally appeared in The Record, BU Law’s alumni magazine. Read the full issue here.
Reported by Meghan Laska
Related News
- Fighting the Good Fight: Jennifer Serafyn
- Annual Pro Bono and Public Service Event Honors Ronald E. Richter (’89)
- BU Law Fellowships Help Graduates Launch Careers in Public Service