Portrait of Clive Stafford Smith

Birthday profile

Clive Stafford Smith

Clive Stafford Smith, English lawyer and author

Born
July 9, 1959
Age in 2026
67
Zodiac sign
Cancer
Birth year
1959

About Clive Stafford Smith

Clive Adrian Stafford Smith (born 9 July 1959) is a British attorney who specialises in the areas of civil rights and working against capital punishment in the United States. He worked to overturn death sentences for convicts, and helped found the not-for-profit Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans. By 2002 this was the "largest capital defence organisation in the South." He was a founding board member of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, based in Houston, Texas. In addition, he has represented more than 80 of the detainees held as enemy combatants since 2002 at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. As of February 2021, a total of 40 men are still held there. In August 2004, Stafford Smith returned from the U.S. to live and work in the United Kingdom. He is the co-founder of Reprieve, a human rights not-for-profit organisation. He left after 15 years, and has now established a new non-profit called 3DCentre. In 2005, he received the Gandhi International Peace Award. During his career in the U.S., by 2002 Stafford Smith had lost appeals in six death penalty cases, but had won nearly 300, earning reprieves from execution for those convicts and exonerating a number of them.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Clive Stafford Smith was born

Clive Stafford Smith was born in 1959. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1959

  • #1 song"Mack the Knife" – Bobby Darin
  • Top movieBen-Hur
  • Top TV showGunsmoke
  • Best-selling bookGoldfinger – Ian Fleming

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentIngemar Johansson knocks out Floyd Patterson for heavyweight title
  • Top headlineAlaska and Hawaii become the 49th and 50th US states
  • Technology milestoneMicrochip (integrated circuit) invented
  • Defining fadBarbie dolls
  • Notable inventionBarbie doll
  • World population2.98 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderDwight D. Eisenhower
  • Sports championLos Angeles Dodgers (World Series)
  • Also wonBoston Celtics (NBA)
  • U.S. population177.1M

1959 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Clive Stafford Smith's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19592026
Gas$0.31$3.45/gal
Average home$12,400$435,000
Average income$7,000$67,500
Minimum wage$1.00$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.69$11.95
Postage stamp$0.04$0.73
Population177.1M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.