A recent Philadelphia Inquirer edi­to­r­i­al crit­i­cized the pro­posed ​“Streamlined Procedures Act,” fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion that would deny or sharply restrict the reach of fed­er­al judges in hear­ing habeas-cor­pus claims from those on death row. Noting that the mea­sure would increase the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son, the edi­to­r­i­al stat­ed:

Amid Washington law­mak­ers’ lat­est dri­ve to fur­ther restrict the appeals of (cap­i­tal) defen­dants, they need to rec­og­nize what could be at risk with their tough-on-crime crack­down — inno­cent lives.

In both Senate and House ver­sions, the inno­cent­ly titled Streamlined Procedures Act amounts to an uncon­scionable assault on fed­er­al court over­sight of the fair­ness of crim­i­nal tri­als in the state courts.

The Republican-spon­sored mea­sure would deny or sharply restrict the reach of fed­er­al judges in hear­ing habeas-cor­pus claims from con­victs. These claims range from whether ade­quate legal coun­sel was pro­vid­ed to indi­gent (and often minor­i­ty) defen­dants, on up to whether an inno­cent per­son may have been convicted wrongly. 

In death-row cas­es, the stakes are as high as they come. In oth­er crim­i­nal mat­ters, the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry’s polic­ing of such cas­es assures that our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is tru­ly just.

Strict lim­its on such appeals were already imposed in 1996 under a post-Oklahoma City bomb­ing, Clinton-era antiter­ror­ism law — and there’s no good rea­son to tight­en them fur­ther.

At a recent Senate hear­ing, pro­po­nents argued unim­pres­sive­ly that the appeals delayed ​“clo­sure” for crime vic­tims, while run­ning up gov­ern­ment legal bills.

Isn’t the cost of respond­ing to appeals sim­ply the price of suc­cess­ful anti­crime efforts that have put 2.1 mil­lion peo­ple behind bars? Lock up the bad guys, by all means, but don’t turn around and scrimp on fair­ness.

The impact of lengthy appeals on crime vic­tims can­not be ignored. But there is a psy­cho­log­i­cal toll, too, on con­victs sit­ting behind bars who know they are inno­cent, some of them on death row.

There have been dozens of peo­ple exon­er­at­ed while await­ing exe­cu­tion in recent years, often after years of painstak­ing appeals and prob­ing of their claims of inno­cence. What if these inmates had not suc­ceed­ed in their appeals in time?

Surely advo­cates of lim­it­ing con­victs’ fed­er­al appeals don’t mean to respond to the trou­bling fact of death-row exon­er­a­tions by strap­ping the pos­si­bly inno­cent to a gur­ney soon­er.

Isn’t it odd how some in Congress — most­ly Republicans, but some Democrats, too — regard the fed­er­al courts as the best venue for class-action law­suits involv­ing con­sumer-prod­uct safe­ty, envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion and civ­il rights. Yet they don’t want to both­er the same high­ly regard­ed fed­er­al bench with cas­es con­cern­ing the fun­da­men­tal rights of life and lib­er­ty?

A sys­tem of jus­tice stream­lined to the degree pro­posed under this mea­sure would not be jus­tice at all.

(Philadelphia Inquirer, July 23, 2005) See Innocence, Representation, Recent Legislative Activities. 

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