Finley Report

On February 20, Phillips Black released brand-new empirical data illustrating how Finley “no-merit” letters undermine legal ethics and judicial process in high-stakes criminal cases. At this link, you can learn about this troubling new data by reading both our comprehensive Finley Report and a law review article in the Harvard Law Review, which was co-authored by a wrongfully convicted Finley-letter recipient and a Phillips Black attorney. You can also listen to a new podcast from A Hard Look, which released an episode exploring Finley, the Report, and how the legal community can rise to the occasion.

What we found was unsettling, including: routine and prejudicial disclosures of privileged and confidential information, public criticism and mistrust of clients by their own court-appointed defense lawyers, systematic failures by defense counsel to adequately review the record or investigate beyond it, and a staggering volume of deficient legal analysis. These startling ethical breaches occurred exclusively when post-conviction petitioners were too poor to hire a private lawyer and disproportionately impacted Black petitioners.