There is a great editorial in the Palm Beach Post criticizing Jeb Bush, titled If State Kills, State Must Pay Lawyers. It was sent to us by a Florida public defender.

Last week, Rudolph Holton walked out of Union Correctional Institution, becoming the 23rd person -- and the fourth in 2 1/2 years -- to be released from the state's Death Row since Florida resumed capital punishment in 1979. He is free because lawyers for the Office of the Capital Collateral Representative (OCCR) stayed with the case long enough to find evidence that could have cleared Holton years ago. In his proposed budget, Gov. Bush zeroes out the OCCR.

On March 18, 2003, America will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, in which a poor Florida prison inmate caused the single biggest change in the history of the U.S. criminal justice system. The Gideon decision guaranteed assistance of counsel to all persons facing imprisonment.

The rationing of legal services to the poor when life and liberty is at stake is neither equal nor just. We say, Shame on Jeb Bush.

Florida's Office of the Capital Collateral Representative was formed in 1995 after a request from the Florida Attorney General and funding was provided for by the state legislature. Today it employs 50 lawyers in three regional offices to represent Death Row inmates.

But legislators always have tried to undercut the agency. Because of conflicts, OCCR sometimes can't represent an inmate, so the state must hire private counsel. In 1998, the Legislature limited to about 800 the number of hours that private attorneys can spend on a case. Nationwide, the standard for death-penalty appeals is more like 3,000 hours. What happens when a lawyer asks for more money? Last year, the Legislature voted to take any such lawyer off the list.

Gov. Bush says cutting OCCR would save $4 million a year. Almost certainly, he's wrong. Courts can't drop the constitutional requirement for adequate counsel. The state will have to find lawyers somewhere, and pay them.

Gov. Bush, typically making the issue all about him, said after Holton's release, "If the question is, are innocent people being executed under my tenure as governor? I can honestly tell you that's not the case." In fact, he can't say that honestly, not with Florida's system having all the credibility of pro wrestling. After each release, the governor says it proves "that the system works." Let him spend 16 years on Death Row for a crime he didn't commit and say "the system works."

It doesn't matter that some of the men released from Death Row were guilty of other crimes, some of them serious. Retaining all respect for murder victims' families, the state cannot tolerate a system with inadequate safeguards against wrongful execution. If Gov. Bush and Mr. Crist want to save money and prevent wrongful executions, they can have it both ways: Abolish the death penalty. (emphasis supplied)

A court in Texas has turned down an 11th-hour appeal by a British man due to die by lethal injection in America tonight.

Jackie Elliott, 42, who was born in Suffolk to American parents, was sentenced to death 16 years ago for the rape and murder of a 19-year-old mother in Austin, Texas.

Last night a court refused to hear fresh evidence which Elliott's lawyers believe will prove his innocence. Judge Chuck Campbell said the DNA evidence did not specifically relate to Elliott but came from other suspects in the case.

Elliott has always protested his innocence and says he was convicted only because of the testimony of police informers covering their own guilt. In the past few days, his legal team has unearthed 40 police reports, allegedly suppressed by the prosecution, that identify other key suspects.

His lawyers believe DNA testing could settle the issue. They said it was "unprecedented" for a state execution to take place before the courts had heard all the evidence.

A bill was introduced in the Kansas Senate today that would impose a two-year moratorium on the death penalty and appoint a commission to study the state's capital murder law.

Cost is said to be a factor--it costs over $1 million for court appointed counsel to defend a capital case, and another $1 million to prosecute.

Among the issues to be studied by the proposed commission are:

"-- Whether the race of the victim or defendant plays a role in bringing capital murder charges;

-- Whether there are disparities across the state in the way capital murder cases are handled;

-- What are the total costs to the state and local governments for capital murder cases;

-- Whether changes are needed in the law to ensure that no innocent person is condemned."

The commission would consist of seven members appointed by the Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice, the Governor and legislative leaders.

Rabbi Lewis Warshauer has an interesting torah commentary opposing the death penalty today. After going through the Talmud sections that address it, including the protections it provides against wrongful executions, such as requiring two witnesses be present at trial and thoroughly examined by the Judge, he concludes:

I would advocate for abolition, on the grounds that the capital punishment system in too many states in America is so broken that it cannot be fixed. It is not just a question of procedural safeguards. The criminal justice system in the United States is driven by prosecutors whose main goal is to obtain convictions. Judges are being sidelined. The Jewish legal system, however, is judge-driven. The judge is supposed to be interested in obtaining justice, not in securing the conviction of the defendant. These are not always the same thing. Because execution is irrevocable, inequities for the meantime have to be tolerated. Capital punishment should be abolished until the system can be overhauled. Only then can it correctly be called a justice system.

Bump and Update from 12:06 am:

In recent months, Attorney General John Ashcroft has been over-ruling decisions of his local prosecutors on the death penalty. He is insisting they ask for it. He's threatening to do it in a case in Denver that is set for trial at the beginning of March--over strong objections from the Judge and despite recommendations against it by his local prosecutors.

But now he's reached a new low. The New York Times reports today that in this case in New York, his prosecutors already cut a deal with the defendant for life in prison--and Aschroft just voided it and said they will go for death.

"Mr. Ashcroft has stirred a controversy in federal prosecutors' offices nationally in recent months by insisting that they seek executions in some cases in which they had recommended against it. Under Justice Department rules, local federal prosecutors can only recommend whether to seek the death penalty; the final decision is up to the attorney general."

Update: Atrios comments on this here :

Leaving aside my objections to the death penalty, this is idiotic. It'll make it impossible to get pleas, which was about the only freaking argument for the death penalty I ever bought - the effectiveness of using it to get people to narc on their pals. I mean, I don't actually know it's all that good for that purpose, but it seems to work pretty well on Law and Order, which is where most of my knowledge of criminal law comes from...

and TBogg here, with a very funny edition of Ashcroft's Ten Commandments.

Texas has executed three inmates this week and six so far this month. Since 1982 when Texas' death penalty was reinstated, 295 have been executed. Next week there will be two more Texas executions. Source: UPI

The Nation kicks off its 2003 edition of Death Row Roll Call, a page "meant to remind people how often this macabre form of retribution is still practiced in the US, and to encourage readers to blast off informed letters of protest on behalf of inmates--using the links and tools we provide--to the appropriate governors and officials presiding over executions."

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. called for Marlyand to abolish its death penalty today. He noted flaws in the system and the possibility that innocent persons could be executed.

His Press Release stated that due to the system's fallibility, "capital punishment could come only at the "intolerable cost of executing, every so often, the wrong person."

Here is the text of Curran's open letter to the Governor, Lt. Governor and General Assembly. Here is the text of the statement he made at the Press Conference today.

Reaction from Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Attorney General Curran recognizes that the death penalty is error-prone, immoral, biased and a fundamental violation of human rights. Today he reminds us that politics, at its best, is about principled leadership. Eight of the 12 people on Maryland's death row are black, and every single person on death row was convicted of killing a white victim - despite the fact that 80 percent of homicides in Maryland involve black or Latino victims. A study recently released by the University of Maryland found that Maryland's death penalty discriminates not only on the basis of the victim's race, but also on geography - most death penalty convictions occur in largely white, suburban Baltimore County.

ArchPundit writes a nice tribute to "Dick Cunningham: Attorney for the Damned." Cunningham was another hero in the fight against the death penalty, who recently met a tragic fate. He was stabbed to death by his mentally ill son.

The Chicago Tribune recently wrote about Cunningham--in eleven installments. The Prologue and first installment are here.

A snippet from the prologue:

Cunningham walked through a world of hurt, a world where killers raped and stabbed and set people on fire; where the killers themselves had often suffered, getting beaten or abandoned or shot.

He walked some of our criminal justice system's darkest halls -- through police stations where suspects are tortured and courts where judges don't care and prisons where inmates are executed in front of witnesses who sit in a room where the floor slopes from back to front so that any vomit will flow toward a drain and can be easily hosed away.

He offered lessons on living and dying to men on Death Row. Don't leave this world with your middle finger extended, he told one man about to be executed. Don't give them that to remember you by. To others, he said, paint, read, write, learn, hope. Live a life that is worth saving, a life that will be missed.

A 31-year-old Chicago man who was eligible for the death penalty -- and could have been the first person sentenced to Death Row after former Gov. George Ryan's mass clemency decree -- instead was sentenced today to life in prison for his role in the deaths of two Chicago men.

Maryland has officially ended its moratorium on the death penalty. The new Governor, Republican Robert Ehrlich, has authorized Judges to begin signing death warrants. The first to be signed will be that for inmate Steven Oken.

The Governor's action lifting the moratorium flies in the face of a new study demonstrating that "of the 12 men awaiting execution in Maryland, nine, including Oken, are from Baltimore County. Eight are black, and all were convicted of killing whites."

It's not just a question of factual innocence. Also at issue are fairness in the application of the death penalty, and the arbitrariness with which it is sought.

Maryland was the only other state besides Illinois that had issued a moratorium.

Update: The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers issued the following statement today, following the announcement:

"Before his own seat is even warm, Maryland's new Republican governor has announced he will keep his campaign promise to lift his predecessor's moratorium on the imposition of the death penalty with the flippant comment by his spokesperson, 'Consider the moratorium over.' "We perhaps should not be surprised, but in light of the independent study in his own state showing serious racial and geographic disparity in the imposition of the death penalty and the recent exposition in Illinois of all that is wrong with it, we certainly are dismayed."

Mexico argued yesterday to the World Court that it should block the U.S. executions of 51 Mexican citizens.

The government of Mexico, in a direct challenge to the Bush administration, asked the International Court of Justice today to block the executions of 51 Mexicans on death row in the United States. The court, the highest tribunal of the United Nations, sits in The Hague. It has no enforcement powers. But if it issues an injunction, the United States must choose whether to respect or defy its judgment.

From our prior post,

Mexico filed suit against the US in the International Court of Justice in the Hague over the U.S.’s failure to comply with the Vienna Convention’s guarantee of allowing foreign nationals access to consular officials prior to interrogation. Mexico is also seeking provisional measures, essentially a temporary restraining order, against all capital prosecutions in the US against Mexican nationals until the case is resolved.

Here is the text of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and Optional Protocols.

From the New York Times:

Four of the seven Democrats who have already joined the presidential race or are likely to do so have longstanding views supporting the death penalty and have not changed their positions because of the circumstances in Illinois. Along with Mr. Lieberman, the group includes Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, Senator Bob Graham of Florida and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. Of the seven, only the Rev. Al Sharpton opposes the death penalty, as he has done for years. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts supports it in the case of convicted terrorists, and Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, supports it for murderers of children or police officers.

We predict at least a few, if not more, will join the call for a moratorium during their campaigns--Al Gore should have in his campaign but didn't. Either did Ralph Nader. It's not about support or opposition to the death penalty. It's about restoring fairness and justice in our criminal justice system, as well as protecting the lives of innocent people.