Forensic social work embeds social workers into the criminal justice system, and Hannah Justvig Vaughan (MSSW ’26) serves a unique role within that system: advocating for prisoners on death row.

As a mitigation specialist in the Capital Habeas Unit (CHU) of the Federal Public Defender Western District of Texas, Vaughan spends her days piecing together the life stories of people the state has already sentenced to death. Her mission is to petition for humane consideration throughout the legal process.

She’s quick to note that the goal of a mitigator isn’t to erase what happened or excuse crimes that the condemned committed. Instead, she says, it’s to examine what led to “the worst 15 minutes” of a person’s life and try to make sense of it, as well as determine whether a capital punishment is warranted.

“When someone you love becomes involved in the legal system, of course you want advocacy for them. You want fairness, and you want context,” Vaughan says. “Similarly, if the state wants to double down on ending someone’s life, they absolutely need to understand what they’re choosing to do with a state-sanctioned homicide.”

The CHU operates in what’s called late-stage litigation: clients are already condemned, and now working through federal habeas petitions that mostly move through the Fifth Circuit. They’re exhausting their appeals as part of the legal system’s framework, and in rare instances, some of those cases can even reach the Supreme Court.

Vaughan noted specific sentences can be altered. For example, she said, if laws have shifted since sentencing, a death sentence can sometimes be reduced to a life sentence. Getting there, however, takes exhaustive research, writing and investigation work that can stretch across years and multiple appeals.

That’s where forensic social work comes into play. In her work, Vaughan digs into the cases, helping build biopsychosocial and spiritual assessments of clients, examining mental and physical health, family history, trauma, poverty, and substance abuse. She travels extensively to interview the condemned, get background from families, speak with the public, and see why and where systems failed.

As a former school social work intern, Vaughan said she’s seen that life circumstances start early, especially for children going through trauma. She’s seen numerous examples of “abused people becoming abusers,” and how the penal system can stigmatize humans to faceless numbers.

By providing dignity to both her clients and to the criminal justice system, a true examination of appropriate punishment can lead to better societal outcomes, Vaughan claims. She said this was also true of the time she worked in the Utah State Prison system, working with psychologists to study sex offenders and help them work towards potential parole.

“I worked with sex offenders and I loved it,” Vaughan said. “I loved studying the psychology behind crime, and what we can do to build actual restorative work for families, victims and communities.”

Vaughan credits multiple professors on the Forty Acres and classes within UT Social Work as a defining influence in her career. She specifically mentioned “out of the classroom” mentoring from UT Social Work clinical faculty, and the ability to connect her practicum to her future career. Vaughan completed her final practicum at the CHU in 2026 and was hired full-time following her graduation.

Vaughan hopes to stay in public defense long-term. Above all, she looks to keep pressing for public defense and dignity throughout capital punishment cases.

“When society allows a state-sanctioned death, it can feel like we are absolving the communities and systems that failed the person long before a crime happens,” she says. “We can’t throw away people when we build the systems that ultimately fail them.”