A Guiding Hand: Brian White to Receive National ABA Award for Death Penalty Defense

For more than thirty years, Brian M. White has practiced law in Decatur, Alabama — quietly, doggedly, and with a devotion to the people the system has already given up on. This September, the American Bar Association will recognize what those of us who work alongside him have known for years: Brian is one of the finest capital defense lawyers in this state.

On September 17, 2026, the ABA will honor Brian with the John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award at its Volunteer Recognition & Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C. The award, first presented to Justice Stevens himself in 2011, recognizes extraordinary volunteer service in death penalty defense — lawyers who step into the hardest cases not because they have to, but because someone has to, and few will.

We can't think of anyone more deserving.

How it started

Brian has been practicing law since 1994. He first came to the Alabama Post-Conviction Relief Project in 2019, when a friend working a capital case had to step away and needed someone to pick it up. Brian said yes. He worked that first Rule 32 case through to the end — and he never really left.

In the years since, he has become the kind of volunteer every organization hopes for but rarely finds: the lawyer who shows up for trainings, who answers the phone for emergency calls at all hours, who will drive files to the courthouse for a case that isn't even his. It's the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes work that keeps a small project like ours running — and Brian has never once treated it as beneath him.

More than a lawyer

Ask anyone in the north Alabama capital defense community about Brian, and you'll hear the same thing: he shows up. He's the lawyer other lawyers call to think through a hard issue. He's earned the respect of the defense bar and local prosecutors alike. His mitigation work has, more than once, persuaded the State to take the death penalty off the table before a case ever went to trial — a victory that never makes headlines, but changes a life all the same.

That is the heart of what this award recognizes. Not a single case, not a single win, but years spent being the guiding hand for clients who had run out of anyone else to turn to.

Congratulations, Brian

The Alabama Post-Conviction Relief Project is proud to call Brian White a colleague. Please join us in congratulating him on this well-deserved national honor.

The ABA Death Penalty Representation Project's Volunteer Recognition & Awards Dinner will be held September 17, 2026, in Washington, D.C.