Chris Eades
Richard Bourke
Billy Sothern

Staff Bios

Richard Bourke

Richard Bourke is a staff attorney with the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center and represents clients at trial level and in state and federal post-conviction. Richard worked for many years in Australia as a criminal barrister before coming to the US to work on death penalty cases. As an Australian lawyer he volunteered in the US for a time and was one of the founders of ReprieveAustralia and Reprieve (US). Richard is a co-director of Reprieve (US).

Billy Sothern

Billy has been representing people facing the death penalty in Louisiana for four years as a staff attorney at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center and the Capital Appeals Project. Currently, he writes appeals for death row prisoners. Last year, one of those prisoners, a juvenile and mentally challenged man named Ryan Matthews, was exonerated after Billy discovered DNA evidence proving Ryan's innocence. During his time at LCAC, Billy worked assisting indigent defenders in Jefferson Parish and elsewhere with motion and writ writing as well as trial preparation and investigation. Billy has the distinction of being the only lawyer in America to have quoted the full text of the Billy Holliday song, Strange Fruit, in a motion opposing allowing prosecutors to wear neck ties with pictures of nooses on them during the capital trial of an African American man. Billy has also worked closely with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and was counsel in a friend of the court brief in the Wilbert Rideau case. Billy also co-directs Reprieve US.

Billy graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts at St. John's College in Annapolis, MD. He earned his JD from New York University School of Law where during his third year he drafted a post-conviction appeal for an unrepresented man on Alabama's death row while working at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, AL.