Raoul D. Schonemann

Raoul Schonemann is a clinical professor and co-director of the Capital Punishment Clinic. Since 1991, he has represented people facing the death penalty in Texas, California, Alabama, and Georgia, and at every stage of the state and federal system of post-conviction review. Prior to joining the law school, he was managing attorney of the Capital Litigation Unit at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta; a deputy public defender with the Office of the State Public Defender in San Francisco; and a staff attorney at the Texas Educational and Appellate Practice Resource Center in Austin.

Professor Schonemann has been actively involved in efforts to improve the quality of legal representation in capital cases. In 2000, he was co-author of “The Fair Defense Report: Analysis of Indigent Defense Practices in Texas,” which analyzed the state of indigent defense representation in Texas and ultimately contributed to the passage of the Texas Fair Defense Act in 2001. He was a consultant to the American Bar Association in its revision of the “Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Counsel in Death Penalty Cases” (2003), and served as the capital defense training director for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers between 2011-2013.

Professor Schonemann graduated from Washington University in 1985 with a B.A. in history with honors. He received his J.D from New York University School of Law in 1989, where he served as an articles editor of the New York University Review of Law and Social Change. Following his graduation from law school, he was a Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, where he taught and supervised students in the Juvenile Justice Clinic. He received an L.L.M. degree from Georgetown in 1994.