Ruth E. Friedman has been the Director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project since its inception in 2006. The Project was created to recruit, train and consult with qualified counsel and otherwise improve representation in post-conviction for the growing number of men and women on the federal death row. Until 2002, Ruth served as Senior Counsel at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama, where she represented capital defendants in federal habeas corpus, state post-conviction, direct appeal, and trial proceedings. Ruth started her career at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. While at the Center, she argued the case of Harris v. Alabama, 513 U.S. 504 (1995) at the United States Supreme Court, unsuccessfully challenging the ability of Alabama trial judges to reject jury sentencing verdicts of life without parole and arbitrarily impose the death penalty. In 2005, Ruth testified in Congress against efforts to cut back on the availability of the habeas writ for criminal defendants. The Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005: Hearings on H.R. 3035 Before the Subcomm. on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, 109th Cong. 1st Reg. Sess. (Nov. 10, 2005) (Statement of Ruth E. Friedman). While in private practice prior to starting the § 2255 Project, Ruth served as a consultant to the Office of Defender Services of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts in Washington, D.C., devising strategies to improve capital habeas corpus services to condemned inmates in underserved jurisdictions around the country. Her publications include Deliberate Indifference: Judicial Tolerance of Racial Bias in Criminal Justice, 51 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 509 (1994), and Solving Alabama's Capital Defense Problems: It's A Dollars And Sense Thing, 44 Ala. L. Rev. 1 (1992). Ruth received her J.D. from Yale Law School and her undergraduate degree from Harvard University.