Strategic Litigation is a strategy applied across all our cases and programs. It aims to bring significant changes in the law, legal practice, and public awareness by carefully selecting and bringing landmark cases to court. While the individual client is our foremost priority, their case will have been selected as they are victims of human rights abuses and representative of many others also incarcerated. In the future, cases can be leveraged to bring about social change and reform in the criminal justice system.

JPP attorneys pursue cases on a pro bono (free) basis. This includes in-house investigators conducting hundreds of hours of investigations to uncover new evidence, casework and client visits as well as using public advocacy for cases as they make their way through the legal system. We seek out physical and mental health experts and secure previously undisclosed medical and police records. Each legal victory holds the promise of setting precedent for thousands of similar cases as well attracting media attention which contributes to public awareness of the conditions for those on death row and for the adoption of best practices in capital defence.

Our objectives with this methodology are:

• Create progressive jurisprudence which advances human rights
• Instigate reform of national laws which do not comply with international human rights law
• Ensure that laws are interpreted and enforced properly
• Document human rights violations
• Enable individuals to seek remedies for human rights violations

Results

• Two acquittals for prisoners in death row;
• 12 stays of execution for prisoners on death row;
• 43 Pakistani prisoners held in Bagram, Afghanistan released;
• Legal manuals created for lawyers litigating torture and defending clients in acquittal of two death row prisoners;
• Multiple trainings for the judiciary and private sector attorneys on mental illness, torture, and death penalty cases.