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Rewarding $#!++/ lawyering

By cdw

The Houston Chronicle reports on the rewarding of  $#!++/  lawyers who miss deadlines: Texas lawyers have repeatedly missed deadlines for appeals on behalf of more than a dozen death row  inmates in the last 2 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 3 recent federal deadlines, the Chronicle reported in March. One client was executed in February after the federal appeal was filed too late. In March, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals chastened Godinich for using the same excuse  a malfunctioning after-hours filing machine  for missing another deadline for a man still on death row...continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on April 21, 2009 (boomark / email).