Scharlette Holdman

Scharlette Jane Holdman due to her work collaborating with attorneys representing death row inmates during the appeals process and defendants facing capital murder charges, especially in Florida in the 1980s. She also earned the nickname "The Mistress of Delay" for the impact her advocacy had on delaying the execution of death row inmates' sentences. Holdman called herself a "death penalty mitigation specialist" and also coined the term "mitigation specialist" to refer to people to whom defense attorneys would refer to gather information on a capital defendant's past that would help prevent them from receiving the death penalty.

While Holdman was not an attorney herself, she counseled and guided capital defense attorneys, providing strategies for those attorneys to prevent their clients from receiving death sentences. Holdman's strategies involved mentoring attorneys on how to provide juries with holistic views of capital defendants' backgrounds. Holdman's work was considered highly influential to the American Bar Association's guidelines on defending capital defendants; Robert Dunham, former executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called Holdman's work the "model for life-history investigations" and stated that it set the "standard" that the American Bar Association continues to follow in death penalty cases. According to The New York Times, Holdman's efforts have been "widely credited" for the decline in the imposition of death sentences in the United States in the 2010s. Holdman grew up in Memphis and graduated from high school in 1964. Afterwards, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in anthropology at the University of Memphis, her Master of Arts in the same field at the University of Oregon, and her Doctor of Philosophy, again in anthropology, at the University of Hawaiʻi. She also worked as an ACLU director in New Orleans and worked to close several jails, although she did not enjoy that work. She moved to Miami, Florida, in 1977, where she briefly worked as the ACLU executive director of Florida before resigning and relocating to Tallahassee, Florida.

Holdman was married once, to James Shotwell Lindzey, although they divorced in 1974. Holdman later stated that she found marriage stifling. They had two children. The Florida Clearinghouse had an annual budget under $25,000, and Holdman's salary was $600 a month; during her time at the clearinghouse, she lived a frugal lifestyle.

The Florida Clearinghouse on Criminal Justice struggled to find an adequate number of attorneys to represent every capital defendant and death row inmate in need of legal representation, and it also struggled with limited funds. As a result, in 1985, the Office of Capital Collateral Representative (CCR) , a centralized government-funded organization, was founded by The Florida Bar. CCR, which, in its first year, received five times more funding than the clearinghouse had, ultimately replaced Holdman's clearinghouse in providing attorneys to capital defendants and death row inmates, although Holdman also worked with CCR as their chief investigator.

After Florida Following her work with the CCR, Holdman relocated to San Francisco, California, where she continued working in anti-death penalty advocacy at one of the California appellate projects.

Holdman's final client was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the main participants in the September 11 terror attacks on the United States. Around that time, Holdman studied Islam and ultimately converted "in solidarity with people who have been unjustly scrutinized and persecuted by the government."

Holdman later moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she worked at the Center for Capital Assistance in training lawyers and investigators to conduct pretrial investigations on inmates' backgrounds and develop evidence to secure life sentences for capital murder defendants.

Later life and death Holdman spent her final years in New Orleans. She died of gallbladder cancer in her New Orleans home on July 12, 2017, at the age of 70. Because of her work aiding Mohammed, and because of her conversion to Islam, she received a Muslim burial.