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Injustices, waste and mis-management in Texas capital defense system

By Douglas A. Berman

Providing a fitting follow-up to The Constitution Project's important report on indigent defense (discussed here), the Houston Chronicle has this effective and important article headlined "Death row lawyers get paid while messing up: Attorneys who continue to miss appeal dates are still getting cases."  Here are a few of the details: Texas lawyers have repeatedly missed deadlines for appeals on behalf of more than a dozen death row inmates in the last two years ? yet judges continue to assign life-or-death capital cases and pay hundreds of thousands in fees to those attorneys, a Chronicle records review shows.  Missing deadlines means their clients can be automatically denied constitutionally mandated reviews before their execution.  Houston lawyer Jerome Godinich missed three recent federal deadlines, the Chronicle reported in March...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on April 20, 2009 (boomark / email).