Gary Ralston, Death Row Defenders; the Scots Legal Team Who Fight Injustice in the States, Daily Record (Scotland), September 21, 2001.

Piya Muquit steers her Saturn car off the wide boulevard and pulls into the drive of a clapboard mansion shaded by a canopy of oak and pecan trees.

Hours later, across town, past the umpteenth McDonald's and down behind Mr Waffle, the vehicle's suspension is really tested as she arrives at a trailer park on the bayou that stretches out to the Gulf of Mexico.

Piya admits: "Sometimes it feels as if I'm on the set of a movie. But, unfortunately, this isn't a Hollywood film."

The suburbs and shacks of New Orleans are a long way from her home in Shotts, Lanarkshire, but ask her about the glamour of her job and she snorts with derision.

Let's face it, there's nothing remotely sexy about working on Death Row.

Piya, 23, a graduate of Aberdeen University, is one of a handful of Scots trained lawyers battling for justice in one of the most repressive legal systems in the world.

She has spent the last three months of her student internship looking for the scraps of evidence that might free two men from a sentence of death by lethal injection.

Depressingly, she knows that even if they are found, it may still not be enough to win them a reprieve.

She says: "I quickly learned that, in the US system, you can have the most solid evidence, but that it doesn't guarantee justice will prevail.

"We are allowed to quiz jurors from original trials on any flaws or doubts they may harbour and they come from across the social spectrum.

"We're visiting people who live in mansions built to beautiful French architectural designs and others who live in shacks and trailers by the side of the bayou.

"It's quite a novelty for them to answer the door to an Asian with a Scottish accent, but for me it's challenging, occasionally difficult and often rewarding work. And I know it will stand me in good stead for my future legal career."

Muqit's first client was convicted of murder during a botched armed robbery, but his mental health including a diagnosis of schizophrenia when he was only nine was overlooked at his trial.

Her second client was convicted of the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl, but not a shred of prosecution evidence confirmed his presence at the scene of the crime.

Life is cheap in Louisiana, where many judicial districts limit defence payments in capital trials to only pounds 700.

Increasingly, the convicted have come to rely on British charities such as Reprieve and Amicus who place more than 40 interns in the US and Caribbean every year.

Many cases are tried with a blatant disregard for the legal process, with threats to the jury and the use of defence lawyers unskilled, under funded and under too much pressure to mount a case.

In the movies, the accused would call Perry Mason, but in Angola High Security Prison, the best bet for condemned men as they sit on Death Row is the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana, where Muquit works as an intern.

Her boss Denise LeBoeuf, reveals: "There are 95 men on Death Row in Louisiana. We represent a dozen in appeal, we're assisting in 12 more cases and we have 14 people waiting for representation.

"We'd love to take them all, but we would need another six lawyers and don't have the funding.

"Truth is, if defence ever got the same resources as prosecution, there wouldn't be any poor people on Death Row. And take it from me there are only poor people on Death Row."

A few blocks away, in the offices of the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Centre, her sentiments are echoed by Clive Stafford Smith.

For the past 17 years, the 43 year old Englishman has been a thorn in the side of Louisiana prosecutors.

He works between 70 and 80 hours a week for an annual salary of around pounds 15,000 a fifth of the pay new graduates in the States can expect if they start work with corporate law firms.

He's saved more than 300 men from Death Row with plea bargains, acquittals or appeals. Only four of his clients have been executed.

But he is paying the cost state funding for his centre has been slashed, halving his staff numbers to just 12.

Clive says: "We've been too successful capital punishment generally means those without the capital get the punishment.

"But we are winning the battle. The last two years have seen a tremendous change in public opinion regarding the death penalty. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that it could be abolished in 10 years."

Next door, his assistant Shauneen Lambe, 29, has just cancelled plans to travel to Glasgow for the christening of her godson because a client is entering the first stage of his appeal against the death penalty.

Londoner Shauneen, a graduate of Edinburgh University, first went to the States five years ago and returned for good in 1999.

Her cases include that of 17 year old Ryan Matthews, convicted last year of murdering a white, middle aged man in a grocery store.

Shauneen says: "They found the mask used by the perpetrator and there was no DNA match with Ryan.

"He was convicted in Jefferson Parish, a right wing district of Louisiana with strong Ku Klux Klan connections. I had to watch his mother and sisters go on the witness stand and beg for Ryan's life, but the jury returned a verdict of death.

"It's a messed up system but, like Clive, I've seen a change in attitudes, even in places such as Jefferson. I've spoken to people there who are aware of the system's flaws and inadequacies."

Across the office, fellow Edinburgh graduate Emily Maw, 25, looks at a photo, pinned to the side of her computer screen, of herself and three pals on Calton Hill, taken three years ago.

Emily, who is from South Wales, likes the picture because it reminds her of a more innocent time before she saw the dehumanisation of the inmates on Death Row.

She says: "Prison controls the physical state of these men. Their hands are chained so tightly to their body that when they light a cigarette, they have to stoop their head for a drag. They have been literally bowed by the system."

Back at the Post Conviction Project, Muquit counts the cost of her dedication pounds 6000 and rising. Interns are unpaid and she has had to bankroll her stay with a career development loan.

Even so, she is trying to extend her stay by three months.

She says: "Many Americans think of LA Law and Ally McBeal when they think of their lawyers, but the reality is very different.

"However, when you are doing something useful as part of a team, that is the greatest high. There's nothing to beat that feeling."