Please join Dorsey & Whitney LLP and
The Advocates for Human Rights’ Death Penalty Project
for our bi-monthly lunchtime speaker series:

How Legal Breakthroughs in the Field of Mental Retardation Have Helped to Open the Door to the Complete Abolition of the Death Penalty in Our Country

presented by

Robert Perske

Wednesday, March 15, 2006
12:00-1:00 P.M.

at

Dorsey & Whitney
Minnesota Room, 15th Floor
50 South 6th Street
 Minneapolis, MN 55402

This presentation will discuss the legal breakthroughs since Atkins v. Virginia, as well as provide an overview of the mentally retarded persons who have been executed since 1976.  In addition, Mr. Perske will discuss individuals with mental retardation who confessed to crimes they did not commit and were later found to be legally innocent. Application will be made for one CLE credit. This presentation is a brown bag lunch. Beverages will be provided.

Speaker biography

Robert Perske tracks, works with and writes about persons with intellectual disabilities who were coerced into confessing to murders they did not commit as well as those on death row.  He has directly or indirectly followed over 100 of these cases.  Perske was the first non-lawyer to receive the American Bar Association’s Paul Hearne Award for Service to Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, Washington, DC, August 12, 2002. In 1999, The National Historic Preservation Trust on Mental Retardation honored Robert and Martha as two of the 35 persons who made major contributions in the field of mental retardation in the 20^th Century. Robert and his illustrator wife, Martha, received The Healing Community Arts and Letters Award for their work in the developmental disability field, at the United Nations in 1987. Perske traveled the country and wrote the case vignettes for the 1976 Report to President Nixon, Mental Retardation: Century of Decision.  He traveled the country again and authored the 1978 Report to President Carter, Mental Retardation: The Leading Edge – Service Programs that Work (President’s Committee on Mental Retardation). In 1968, Perske received the Rosemary F. Dybwad International Award for traveling and studying mental retardation programs in Sweden and Den mark. He has written numerous books including Circles of Friends, Show Me No Mercy, Unequal Justice and Deadly Innocence.

Please R.S.V.P. to Rosalyn Park at The Advocates for Human Rights
by Tuesday, March 14, 2006.
Phone: (612) 341-3302 ext. 106 • Email: rpark@mnadvocates.org