A new book by David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution, captures the author's personal and legal experiences in representing over 100 inmates on death row. The book is a personal memoir of Dow’s encounter with the death penalty system, as he represents defendants and witnesses their executions. Publisher’s Weekly called the book “sobering, gripping and candid." Dahlia Lithwick of Slate said it is "a powerful collage of the life of a death penalty lawyer," in a NY Times book review (Feb. 14, 2010).
Dow, a former death penalty supporter, is a professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and an internationally recognized defense attorney. He is the founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network.
Lawyers for Khanh Dinh Phan asked the Georgia Supreme Court to dismiss the charges against him or to bar the state from seeking the death penalty because the state has been unable to pay for Phan's defense. After his arrest in 2005, Chris Adams and Bruce Harvey were appointed to represent Phan. "The state of Georgia has made Mr. Harvey and myself potted plants," Adams recently said. "We are lawyers in name only. ... The state of Georgia has failed, and failed miserably, in this case." The case has yet to go to trial, and the state public defender system has been unable to pay for attorney fees, expert witnesses, and for investigators. Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter agreed that there has been no money for the defense, and that the state defender system is "fatally flawed," but urged the judges not to dismiss the charges or strike the death penalty. Porter said, "We all agree that funding has not been provided, and I don't know if there's a realistic possibility funding will be provided." The Georgia Supreme Court is expected to rule in a similar issue in which a Pike County death penalty defendant has waited four years to go to trial because there was no funding for his defense.
On January 20, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence for Holly Wood for the 1993 shooting of his former girlfriend in Alabama, despite the fact that the attorney working on the penalty phase of the case failed to investigate or tell the jury about Wood's borderline mental retardation. A federal District Court had overturned his death sentence because of the inadequate performance of the inexperienced lawyer, although other lawyers working on the case had seen a report on Wood's mental status and did not use it. There was ample other evidence indicating Wood had an IQ of less than 70 and had been classified as mentally retarded that was not pursued by any of the attorneys. The Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, agreed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that Wood failed to show that the lawyers were constitutionally ineffective. The Court stated, "[T]he state court’s conclusion that Wood’s counsel made a strategic decision not to pursue or present evidence of his mental deficiencies was not an unreasonable determination of the facts." Justice John Paul Stevens, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, noted, "There is a world of difference between a decision not to introduce evidence at the guilt phase of a trial and a failure to investigate mitigating evidence that might be admissible at the penalty phase… the only reasonable factual conclusion I can draw from this record is that counsel’s decision to do so was the result of inattention and neglect."
On January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in