In May 2008, the California Supreme Court threw out the death sen­tence of con­vict­ed mur­der­er Adam Miranda and ordered a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al, rul­ing that Los Angeles County pros­e­cu­tors failed to dis­close key infor­ma­tion that like­ly affect­ed the sen­tenc­ing of Miranda. A Los Angeles Times edi­to­r­i­al high­lights the arbi­trari­ness of this case, not­ing that many defen­dants with­out ded­i­cat­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion might not have fared so well. This edi­to­r­i­al asks about the oth­er inmates on California’s death row:

Miranda had an attor­ney whose firm was will­ing to donate mil­lions of dol­lars worth of time to his case. Most of the 669 peo­ple on San Quentin’s death row aren’t near­ly as lucky. If they have lawyers at all, they’re usu­al­ly har­ried, well-mean­ing pro­fes­sion­als who do the best they can with the lim­it­ed resources the state gives them to pur­sue their appeals. Earlier this year, one defense lawyer told the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice that, in a sin­gle death-penal­ty case, he typ­i­cal­ly must review 100 box­es of files and explore 40 areas in which things may have gone wrong — but must tell his clients that ​“maybe I can only do sev­en of them” because there isn’t enough mon­ey to do the rest.

Confronted with the enor­mous cost of the death penal­ty in California, its sup­port­ers argue that it would be cheap­er if the process were sped up. Yet Miranda’s case shows how impor­tant those seem­ing­ly end­less appeals can be.… California’s death penal­ty costs too much — in time and mon­ey, but most­ly in its poten­tial for injus­tice — to be sus­tained.

(Editorial ​“A Death Sentence Voided” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2008). See also Costs and Editorials.

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