Millard Farmer oral history interview, April 6, 2012

Item — othertype: Oral History

Identifier: FarmerM_20120406

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Interviewed by Diane Fowlkes. Farmer describes how he believed his early success in defense of bootleggers was due to his legal prowess, but later discovered it was only because there were usually enough of the defendant’s customers and friends on the jury. He details bootlegging industry operations in Meriwether County and points out how the bootlegging community voted with the church to keep the county dry, but did so to avoid having to compete with taxed liquor. He describes the respect shown to the African American lawyer C.B. King. He recounts how, while in college, he won his first federal court case on appeal which convinced him that he could be a successful attorney. Once he began representing African Americans he realized he needed to change the racial composition of juries. He mentions his law partners, including Amanda Potterfield, and recounts the early days of filing jury composition challenges and how they learned from their mistakes until they finally won a challenge. He reveals the importance of running his law practice like his father ran his agriculture business: clients must pay if they can afford to; if they can’t, we will help you out; hire people who know more than you do. He describes how Betty Kehrer encouraged him to join the Georgia Criminal Justice Council in Atlanta to defend indigent persons in criminal cases, and how Amanda Potterfield joined him. He describes an episode in which a white female client refused to allow him to file a jury composition challenge, along with an incidence in which his tactics led to him to being punched by a sheriff, and another where he was falsely held in contempt and jailed. He describes the cofounding of the Team Defense Project, with Morris Dees and sociologist Courtney Mullin, to represent only persons in death penalty cases. He details the Dawson Five case, and the importance of raising the community’s social awareness in relation to trials. He comments on how they, along with National Jury Project and The Law Project, believed that the combined skills of social scientists and attorneys could convince jurors that death sentences were wrong. He describes the consequences that ensued when Morris Dees ceased funding for Team Defense.

Dates

Creation: April 6, 2012

Creator

Farmer, Millard (Interviewee, Person)

Restrictions on Access

Oral history available for research.

Biographical Note

Born in 1934, noted death penalty defense attorney Millard C. Farmer, Jr. grew up in Newnan, Georgia. A University of Georgia graduate (1956), he worked in the family business and attended Woodrow Wilson College of Law during the evenings. He was admitted to the Georgia Bar in 1967, built a successful practice in Newnan, and was a co-founder of the Bank of Coweta there. Farmer also represented disadvantaged clients, and came to question whether African American defendants could be tried fairly before all-white juries. By 1970, he and his associates were challenging jury composition on the grounds of race. In 1976, he co-founded the Team Defense Project (TDP) with social psychologist Courtney J. Mullin and Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center. TDP was dedicated to the representation of indigent persons in death penalty cases and enjoyed many high-profile successes in the 1970s and 1980s, notably the case of the “Dawson Five” in Dawson, Georgia. Most of Farmer and Team Defense Project’s work was intended to bring attention to the inequities in the way capital punishment is used, and many of TDP’s litigation strategies, such as jury composition challenges and motion filings it developed, have become widely adopted tactics. Farmer and his colleagues taught and lectured on these strategies to numerous legal groups and audiences. An acknowledged expert in capital cases, Farmer has also represented clients bringing racial discrimination suits. He has received numerous honors from legal and civil liberties advocacy organizations. Farmer died in 2020.