Lawyer Gives Up Death-Row Defense to Teach Middle School
Lawyer Tom Dunn had defended accused murderers in capital cases for 20 years, including Troy Davis, the inmate who claims the Eighth Amendment prevents his execution because he is actually innocent.
Dunn led the nonprofit law firm called the Georgia Resource Center until this year, when he went to Atlanta for the training program called Teach for America, the New York Times reports. Now he teaches at the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, working in classrooms where special education students are blended with others.
Dunn told his colleagues that he had suffered congestive heart failure after ignoring a sore throat that led to toxic shock, and he could no longer keep up his legal work. But the Times story makes his teaching job sound difficult, too.
Dunn told the Times that he saw a common thread in the stories of the defendants he represented: Many lacked a supportive authority figure such as a teacher. A little help, he said, can mean “the difference between a good life and a ruined life.”
