Emaleigh Hutchison

Emaleigh Hutchison is the deputy director of the Balanced Justice Project at Florida International University’s College of Law, and research scholar based at the Florida Center for Capital Representation at Florida International University’s College of Law (FCCR). Emaleigh is a Florida-barred attorney and a mitigation specialist with the Project.

Emaleigh graduated from the University of Florida cum laude in 2018 and entered Florida International University College of Law in 2019. In Fall 2020, Emaleigh took the death penalty law course with Professor Hannah Gorman, and found early in the course that this field of law was different. Capital work is a rare opportunity in the legal world to make a direct, positive impact on others. After the course ended, Emaleigh signed up for the death penalty law clinic so that she could gain real-world experience in capital mitigation work. Emaleigh quickly learned that the real-world work is difficult, emotional, and never-ending, but also incredibly rewarding and important. Emaleigh began to volunteer with the Balanced Justice Project, housed within the death penalty law clinic, in her free time, and eventually became a Research Assistant with the Project. Professor Gorman reached out to Emaleigh after graduation about potentially coming back to the Project after taking the Florida Bar to continue working as an employee. Emaleigh passed the Florida Bar in 2022 and began working with the Balanced Justice Project again immediately after.

With the Balanced Justice Project, Emaleigh has specialized in international prisoner transfer work, Hurst re-sentencing research work, capital juror information research work, in-field mitigation investigation work (both in Florida and out-of-state), capital case work, mitigation field networking at national events, assisting with teaching the death penalty clinic student and death penalty law class, and direct client relations work with capital defendants.