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Federal Review of State Death Sentences

By Steve Hall

"Congress must rewrite the law governing lawyers for poor death-row inmates," is the title of an editorial in today's Washington Post. THERE IS something disturbing and distasteful about allowing states to take shortcuts in their quests to put convicts to death. But that is the essence of a deal Congress struck with the states in the mid-1990s. States that guaranteed and paid for a robust system of legal representation for poor death-row inmates could fast-track federal appeals of state capital-punishment convictions. To qualify, a legal defense program had to be certified as acceptable by the federal courts. After nearly a decade, not a single state qualified. Some in Congress blamed the courts, arguing that judges were either imposing standards that were impossible to meet or were blocking certification because they objected to shortened court deadlines...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on June 21, 2010 (boomark / email).