Edward Earl Carnes

Edward Earl Carnes (born June 3, 1950) is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Education and legal career Carnes received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Alabama in 1972. He received his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1975. After law school, he accepted a position as an assistant state attorney general for the state of Alabama, where he served from 1975 to 1992. From 1981 to 1992 he served as the Chief of the Capital Punishment and Post-Conviction Litigation Division of the Alabama State Attorney General's Office. As the head of Alabama capital punishment unit, Carnes became, according to the National Law Journal, "the premier death penalty advocate in the country and a chief adviser on capital punishment to judges, the U.S. Justice Department and other prosecutors." Carnes re-wrote Alabama's death penalty statute, and defended its use before the Supreme Court of the United States on three occasions, including Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625. Carnes's ascendancy to the bench created a hole in the capital punishment unit, leading an Alabama appellate judge to lament that the state had lost a "very effective voice in support of executions in this state."