Inadequate funding of capital defense attorneys has drastically slowed the appeals process in some states. The result: overflowing Death Row populations, including California’s, reports show.
A 2008 report evaluating California’s death penalty found “to achieve the goals of justice, fairness and accuracy in the administration of the death penalty in California, and reduce delays at least to the national average, there is urgent need to increase the funding at every level: trials, direct appeals and habeas corpus review.”
A commission that included Gov. Jerry Brown, then attorney general produced the report.
In Kentucky, capital defenders, investigators, and mitigation specialists are “routinely overworked and underpaid, carrying caseloads ranging from 12 to 25 capital cases at any given time,” according to a report in The Augusta Chronicle.
Kentucky’s capital defenders complain that heavy death penalty caseloads caused 50 of the 78 cases to be overturned on appeal. Public Advocate Ed Monahan said he believes the reason is defenders had inadequate time to complete their cases before trial.
The American Bar Association says a capital attorney can handle a maximum of four death penalty cases at a time. However, in Georgia, court papers show that defenders often handle more than six. “Current funding levels in Georgia, capital trials have resulted in seven death penalty verdicts out of 125 cases since 2005,” according to the Augusta Chronicle. In five cases, the district attorney withdrew death notice, and in one case, a client died in custody. There remain 51 cases pending in Georgia, the report said.
Pennsylvania has twice the Death Row population as Georgia. There, capital defenders are paid based on a 15-year-old fee schedule, which a Philadelphia judge recently ruled was “woefully inadequate.”
“I think ultimately, there’s no such thing as death penalty on the cheap,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
