CCDPW: Fighting for Women and Gender Diverse People

Defending Human Rights for Women and Gender Diverse People

The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide (CCDPW) is a nonprofit dedicated to exposing discrimination in the judicial system and defending women, trans folks, and gender diverse people facing extreme sentences. We know from our research that this population is regularly subjected to unfair practices inside courtrooms. The ubiquity of this discrimination makes it invisible and accepted, but we are here to change that. 

For years, CCDPW has engaged in advocacy, research, public education, and targeted litigation on behalf of the estimated 30,000 people worldwide facing execution. Our work focuses on women and gender diverse people, but the victories we win are beneficial to all incarcerated people as we work to bring equality and fairness into deeply flawed systems. We fight for total abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances, in every country on earth. 

At CCDPW we have crafted an internal feedback system where our work with clients informs the new research agendas we undertake. In turn, our research produces original data which we utilize within advocacy campaigns and storytelling, which then impact our litigation strategies and policy recommendations in ways that we hope will positively shape our clients’ experiences moving forward.


When We Fight, We Win
In January of 2025, we celebrated a monumental victory. In its decision in Andrew v. White, the Supreme Court of the United States recognized for the first time in its history that irrelevant gender stereotypes involving women’s sex lives and mothering skills have no place in a criminal courtroom. In Ms. Andrew’s case, prosecutors presented evidence detailing her intimate relationships (including one that took place twenty years before trial), the outfits she wore, and even her style of underwear. In closing argument, they dangled multiple pairs of Ms. Andrew’s underwear before the jury, arguing that it was not the sort of underwear a grieving widow would wear. The federal court of appeals will now decide whether to grant Ms. Andrew a new trial. 

The decision, which garnered the support of conservative and liberal justices alike, was issued a day after the new president's inauguration. It felt like a miracle. But in fact, it was the culmination of years of advocacy by a team of lawyers The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide (CCDPW) brought together and supported every step of the way.

Four years ago, we drafted and filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, arguing that the prosecution’s sex-shaming tactics violated Ms. Andrew’s fair trial rights. We recruited the law firm King & Spaulding as a pro bono partner and referred them to an experienced, gender-sensitive mitigation specialist working with Phillips Black. One of our former colleagues and clinic students, Nathalie Greenfield JD '21–who began working on Ms. Andrew’s case as Professor Babcock’s law student–then joined the team with Cornell alum John Mills JD '08. We recruited gender justice organizations to sign on as amici in the Supreme Court while raising media awareness about the misogyny in Ms. Andrew’s case. The amici cited our research in their briefs to the Court.

The Supreme Court victory sets an important precedent for exposing and addressing gender discrimination in the criminal legal system, something our team is deeply proud of. However, we still have a great deal more work to do if we wish to truly address intersectional discrimination in the trials of women facing capital punishment or death by incarceration. 

Women are sentenced to death for killing their abusers after lifetimes of gender-based violence in courts across the world. A study by CCDPW researchers found that at least 96% of the women on death row in the United States had survived at least one form of gender-based violence. In places like Tanzania, women are sentenced to death even when acting in self defense because the penal code makes the death penalty mandatory for murder. In Uganda, women, LGBTQIA+ folks, and trans individuals are given death sentences for consensual same sex relationship under the anti-homosexuality act. In Iran, women are being executed for standing up for basic human rights. While these contexts and judicial systems vary, the thread that unites them is the incompatibility of capital punishment to exist in societies that truly value freedom, the possibility of rehabilitation, and human rights. 

If we want to make global abolition a reality, its imperative we understand the stories, lives, and experiences of the most marginalized members of the global death row population, people who until now have been left out of the broader advocacy movements challenging capital punishment. 

To tackle this complex issue, we are training capital defense lawyers, conducting research to enlighten policy makers and courts, and working directly with women and gender diverse individuals to tell their stories. 

We need your help to get marginalized people at risk of execution the justice they deserve.  Join us in this struggle and support our efforts to eradicate capital punishment forever. Together, we can uplift human dignity and make state execution a relic of the past. 

CCDPW was part of the legal team that helped save Melissa Lucioan innocent women on death row in Texas, from execution in April 2022. We continue to fight for her release, despite the fact that a court found her to be actually innocent and recommended her sentence be overturned.