The first time Josh told a client on death row he was gay, the man didn’t react. “Josh, I don’t care what you do with your ass,” he said, “as long as you’re helping mine.” The remark cut through years of legal arguments and moral debates, collapsing the distance between lawyer and condemned man in a single sentence.
Josh spent seven years representing men on Alabama and federal death rows. He hadn’t planned to take those cases. At 24, fresh out of law school and working at a corporate firm in Manhattan, he had no experience with capital punishment. A friend from law school asked if he’d join two pro bono cases. The clients were “really nice,” she said. There were “interesting legal issues,” and he’d get to work with an important partner at the firm. That was enough.
The surveillance video that wasn’t
One of his first tasks involved reviewing the prosecution’s evidence. A 30-second surveillance video demanded his attention. He watched it hundreds of times, memorizing every frame. Then he noticed something wrong: it wasn’t a video at all. It was a slideshow—still images stitched together to look like continuous footage. The gaps were invisible to the jury, who filled them in unconsciously.
Related: Retired judges break their usual silence
The government’s actions struck him as indefensible. That was the moment he became committed to the work.
His first prison visit came with a warning: don’t wear khaki. The reason became clear when he met his client—a strongly built, baby-faced Black man in his mid-30s, dressed in a khaki jumpsuit over a white undershirt. The guards didn’t want to mistake a lawyer for an inmate. The man was covered in tattoos, including a woman’s name stretched across his neck.
“I’m blessed, I can’t complain,” the client said when Josh asked how he was doing. “Doing better than Muammar Gaddafi.”
Related: Burnham faces prison reform dilemma
Laughter through the bars
Humor, Josh discovered, was a survival tool on death row. Another client, who had tried to take his own life multiple times, mailed him a prison-issued pamphlet on yoga and mindfulness. Across the top, in all caps: “NOT WORKING! :P” Even in despair, the man wanted Josh to see the joke.
The death penalty depends on keeping the condemned abstract. Laughter made that impossible. Josh’s clients were people convicted of terrible crimes, but no verdict could capture the whole person. Many had spent decades on death row, accumulating friendships, frustrations, and routines. They could be funny, perceptive, and infuriating—sometimes in the same conversation.
One client, held in solitary confinement for years, became a prolific artist. His tiny cell had a frosted window, but he filled notebooks with abstract, distorted figures he called his “Sassy Boys.” They wore tiny hats, carried canes, and had earrings. “They’re always late and unbothered,” he said. “Like jazz: either you get it or you don’t.”
Related: Burnham vows to keep rapists in jail
Seeing him create something so alive from such a confined space made Josh question why he was postponing his own life. He started performing standup and improv in New York.
Learning to fail
Josh eventually left the law. The burnout was real. When the stakes were life and death, everything else felt trivial. Still, quitting felt like a betrayal. He dreaded telling his clients. But the goodbyes were anticlimactic. They’d seen lawyers come and go before.
A few weeks ago, the client who drew the Sassy Boys called with an idea: a musical. Not to make a political point. Just because it sounded fun.
