Florida fights over death-row lawyers

Some CCRC critics say long appeal times are in part a result of a deliberate effort by CCRC lawyers to delay cases rather than litigate them. "If you can delay an execution long enough, what eventually happens is after 10 or 15 years, they are able to raise the specter that somebody has changed their testimony or there is new evidence, and the state is not going to be able to challenge that," says Gary Beatty, a Florida lawyer with 15 years of experience prosecuting capital cases.

Part of the theory behind the Bush proposal is that private lawyers will be less likely to use delaying tactics because their fees will be payable only upon completion of certain portions of the appeals process.

Roger Maas directs the Florida Commission on Capital Cases, a group set up to oversee the death-row appeals process, including the CCRC. He says that while there were documented instances of CCRC lawyers using inappropriate delaying tactics in the past, they have mostly been corrected. "We are moving quicker now," he says. "I don't see undue delays."

Mr. Maas quotes Florida's Chief Justice Harry Lee Anstead as commenting recently that "Florida's death penalty procedures are the envy of the rest of the nation." Both Texas and California are studying Florida's capital-appeals process, he adds.

Mr. Beatty also says most of the state lawyers handling death-row appeals are opposed to the death penalty, and some view it as an illegitimate use of state power that justifies extraordinary efforts to fight it.

"The people who get drawn to the CCRC have an agenda to begin with," he says, adding that some state lawyers appear to be working to advance a political agenda - abolition of the death penalty - rather than simply providing competent legal counsel to death-row inmates.

Others say death-penalty appeals are different. Files can range from 25 to 40 boxes, requiring an average 3,000 hours of work. And the potential outcome is always present in thought. "When a CCRC lawyer loses a case, somebody dies," says the ACLU's Spaulding.

Should the state legislature adopt the Bush proposal, there will likely be enough qualified private lawyers to represent all death-row inmates. Maas says there are 133 lawyers now on the state's registry of private lawyers willing to take death-case appeals and most don't have a case yet. They have an average of 17 years of legal experience, he adds, versus two to three years of experience for most CCRC lawyers.

But he says it is unclear what would happen to the current CCRC clients during any transition. Private lawyers may be reluctant to take a case in mid-stream.

Another unresolved issue is how the state's payment system will work. Private lawyers are expected to complete their appeals within 800 billable hours. But experts say the average death-penalty case takes 3,000 hours.

Page: 1 | 2