The death penalty in America will be discussed during a Lunch with the League meeting at noon today (Tuesday, April 6).

The virtual meeting is hosted by the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge. It will feature Marshall Jensen, a federal public defender for the Middle District of Tennessee. His talk is titled “‘Spaces of Sorrow Only God Can Touch’: The Death Penalty in Modern America.”

“Most people think that those on death row must be the worst of the worst,” Jensen said in a press release. “But when we examine who ends up on death row in America, what they share is they almost uniformly tend to be poor, mentally ill, intellectually disabled, or suffer from some form of organic brain damage.”

Having served as a federal public defender for the Middle District of Tennessee in the Capital Habeas Unit since January 2020, Jensen represents people sentenced to death in their final, federal appeals before execution, the press release said. Prior to this work, he served as an assistant public defender at the Knox County Public Defender’s Community Law Office, where he represented indigent individuals in Knox County criminal courts.

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