Recent exon­er­a­tions from death row, such as the release of Levon Jones in North Carolina on May 3, have been linked to the poor qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion some of these inmates received. This rais­es par­tic­u­lar con­cern as the nation resumed exe­cu­tions on May 6. William Lynd of Georgia was the first per­son exe­cut­ed since Sept. 25, 2007. But Georgia’s new pub­lic defend­er sys­tem has had its bud­get cut back and has been forced to elim­i­nate more than 40 posi­tions. Robin Maher of the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Representation Project com­ment­ed, ​“I wish I could say that things have got­ten a lot bet­ter, but in fact I can say with con­fi­dence that things have changed not much at all. We are see­ing the same kinds of egre­gious­ly bad lawyer­ing that we saw 10 or 15 years ago, for a vari­ety of rea­sons, includ­ing inad­e­quate fund­ing.”

Of the 36 states that allow the death penal­ty, only about 10 have statewide cap­i­tal-defense sys­tems, one of the prac­tices rec­om­mend­ed by the ABA. North Carolina has made some improve­ments to its defense sys­tem after severe crit­i­cism, but inmates like Jones, the 8th per­son exon­er­at­ed from North Carolina, was sen­tenced to death before the changes. A fed­er­al judge in his case con­clud­ed, ​“Jones received two appoint­ed attor­neys that spent vir­tu­al­ly no time or effort inves­ti­gat­ing the offense or his back­ground.” The court over­turned Jones’ con­vic­tion and the District Attorney dropped all charges.

The pre­vi­ous inmate freed in North Carolina was Glenn Chapman. According to the N.Y. Times, ​“Judge Robert C. Ervin of State Superior Court ruled in April that Mr. Chapman’s lawyers had failed their client, not­ing that one of them could recall inter­view­ing only one wit­ness and had vis­it­ed the crime scenes for the first time two weeks before tri­al. The lawyers had both admit­ted to heavy drink­ing dur­ing oth­er tri­als. Judge Ervin also found that Dennis Rhoney, then a police detec­tive, know­ing­ly pre­sent­ed false and mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion on the stand. The State Bureau of Investigation is review­ing per­jury claims against Mr. Rhoney.”
(S. Dewan, ​“Releases from Death Row Raise Doubts over Quality of Defense,” N.Y. Times, May 7, 2008). See Innocence and Representation. There have been 129 inmates exon­er­at­ed and freed from death row since 1973.

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