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In Kansas

By Steve Hall

It's hard to believe that this could happen less than five years ago -- an attorney in a death penalty case who hired no experts.  The Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Wiggins v. Smith was limited to social history and mitigation, but should have been a clear signal to the trial judge that the case was headed for trouble ahead.Steve Fry reports, "No experts sought in death case," for the Topeka Capital-Journal of Kansas.The attorney representing death penalty defendant Phillip D. Cheatham had never handled a death penalty case before Cheatham and didn't get funds to obtain expert services in the Cheatham case, according to testimony Monday.The testimony surfaced during a hearing to determine whether defense attorney Dennis Hawver gave ineffective assistance of counsel to Cheatham, 36, who was sentenced to death in 2005 for the Dec...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on December 01, 2009 (boomark / email).