A state agency in Florida has become one of the most successful death-row defense services in the nation, working to overturn improper death sentences and, ideally, prevent the execution of innocent individuals.

So why does Gov. Jeb Bush want to shut it down?

"Governor Bush believes that capital cases should be resolved within five years after a death sentence is imposed - not 20 years," the governor's proposed budget says. "Delays of 10 to 20 years in capital cases are not fair to anyone and justice is not served."

Bush's proposed budget, now being debated by state lawmakers in Tallahassee, seeks to speed up executions by privatizing the capital-appeals process - moving the primary responsibility for death-row appeals to private-sector lawyers rather than lawyers working as state employees.

The governor's staff estimates the move could save the state $3.8 million a year while preventing excessive delays in the appeals process. Florida executed three individuals in 2002. There are 366 inmates on Florida's death row.

The proposal comes less than a month after outgoing Illinois Gov. George Ryan granted pardons to every inmate on his state's death row, saying he had no confidence that innocent men weren't among them. Also last month, Rudolph Holton, who spent 16 years on Florida's death row, walked out of prison after a DNA test proved that a key piece of evidence at his trial - a single hair - belonged to the murder victim, not Mr. Holton. Holton became the 25th death-row inmate in Florida released from prison as a result of successful appeals.

The state agency on the chopping block is the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel (CCRC). It employs roughly 100 staff members and lawyers in three regional offices representing more than 200 death row inmates. (The remaining death-row inmates who want to appeal are represented by public defenders or private lawyers who have registered for capital cases with the state.)

Critics of the Bush proposal say that there is no evidence private lawyers will pursue capital appeals any faster or more cheaply than state lawyers.

"They are taking a system that is working now and replacing it with a system that may be a quagmire," says Larry Spaulding, who headed the state's death-row appeals agency when it first opened in 1985. Mr. Spaulding is now with the ACLU in Tallahassee.

Not everyone familiar with the system agrees it is working. "It is a shame that it takes 12 years on average in Florida to execute someone who has been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death," says Jerry Blair, president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorney's Association. "That undermines public confidence."

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