Washington and Lee University School of Law
David I. Bruck
Director, Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse
Clinical Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Professor David Bruck has practiced criminal law since 1976, and since 1980 has specialized in the defense of capital cases at the trial, appellate and post-conviction stages. He brings his expertise as Richland County ( Columbia, S.C.) Public Defender and as Chief Attorney of the South Carolina Office of Appellate Defense, to his current position as Director of the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse.
Bruck has successfully argued six death penalty cases in the United States Supreme Court, including Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1 (1986), and Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154 (1994), and has handled more than 60 capital appeals in state and lower federal courts. He has represented capital defendants at trial in more than 15 cases, including State v. Susan Smith, in which he and co-counsel Judy Clarke obtained a life sentence after their client was convicted of drowning her two small children.
Bruck has testified before U.S. Congressional committees on death penalty legislation on seven occasions, has presented CLE programs on capital and appellate litigation in more than twenty-five states and U.S. territories, and in 1996 received the John Minor Wisdom Public Service & Professionalism Award from the ABA Section of Litigation.
He has served as Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel since the inception of the Project in January 1992. He was the 2002 Scholar-in-Residence at Washington & Lee Law School in Lexington, Virginia, and now is a clinical professor of law.
Publications
Death Watch: Change, Redemption Do Exist, The Champion, June 27, 2003, at 33, available at Lexis; Westlaw.
A Rarefied Kind of Dread, 5 J. App. Prac. & Process 75 (2003) (First Arguments at the Supreme Court of the United States), available at Hein-Online; Lexis; Westlaw.
Capital Punishment in the Age of Terrorism, 41 Cath. Law. 187 (2002) (Panel Discussion with Norman L. Greene, Norman Redlich, Paul Saunders, Richard Weisberg, and Kenneth Roth), available at Lexis; Westlaw.
A Tribute to William S. Geimer, 58 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 412 (2001), available at Hein-Online; Lexis; Westlaw.
Keynote Address: Political and Social Misconception Fueling the Death Penalty, 13 T.M. Cooley L. Rev. 863 (1996) (Death Penalty Symposium), available at Lexis; Westlaw.
Habeas Corpse: The Right Appeal Under Fire, The New Republic, July 15, 1991, at 10 (with Leslie Harris), available at ProQuest; Westlaw.
Does the Death Penalty Matter? Reflections of a Death Row Lawyer, 1 Reconstruction, No. 3 (1991), at 35 (1990 Ralph E. Shikes Lecture, Harvard Law School).
Can You Stop Client Interrogation Behind Your Back?, S.C. Law., Nov./Dec. 1991, at 31, available at Westlaw.
Sentencing the Mentally Retarded to Death: A Eighth Amendment Analysis, 41 Ark. L. Rev. 725 (1988) (The Mentally Retarded in the Criminal Justice System Symposium) (with John Blume), available at Hein-Online; Westlaw.
On Death Row in Pretoria Central: Capital Punishment in South Africa. It's Not All That Different, The New Republic, July 13, 1987, at 18, available at Westlaw.
Is the Death Penalty Only for Killers of Whites?, Wash. Post, Oct. 12, 1986, at D1, available at Lexis; ProQuest; Westlaw.
Book Review, The New Republic, Jan. 20, 1986, at 27 (reviewing James Q. Wilson et al., Crime and Human Nature (1985)), available at ExpAcad.
Executing Teen Killers Again, Wash. Post, Sept. 15, 1985, at D01, available at ProQuest; Westlaw.
The Death Penalty: An Exchange, The New Republic, May 20, 1985, at 20 (with Edward I. Koch), available at Westlaw.
Executing Juveniles for Crime, N.Y. Times, June 16, 1984, at 23, available at ProQuest.
Book Review, 238 The Nation 266 (1984) (reviewing Alan Dershowitz, The Best Defense (1982) and James S. Kunen, How Can You Defend Those People?: The Making of a Criminal Lawyer (1983)).
Decisions of Death, The New Republic, Dec. 12, 1983, at 18.
Strom Thurmond's Roots, The New Republic, March 3, 1982, at 15.
The Four Men Strom Thurmond Sent to the Chair, Wash. Post, April 26, 1981, at C1, available at Lexis; ProQuest.
