A new study led by Vanderbilt University law pro­fes­sor Nancy King has revealed that few­er con­vic­tions have been over­turned since the 1996 enact­ment of the Anti-ter­ror­ism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). The 2‑year study was the first to exam­ine the effects of AEDPA. It exam­ined 2,400 non-cap­i­tal cas­es that were ran­dom­ly select­ed from among the more than 36,000 habeas cas­es filed in fed­er­al dis­trict court nation­wide by state pris­on­ers dur­ing 2003 and 2004, as well as more than 360 death penal­ty cas­es filed in 13 fed­er­al dis­tricts between 2000 and 2002. King’s research showed that pri­or to the pas­sage of AEDPA, fed­er­al courts grant­ed a writ of habeas cor­pus to a state pris­on­er in about one of every 100 non-cap­i­tal cas­es filed. After the new law’s enact­ment, that num­ber was clos­er to one in every 300 cas­es. King not­ed, ​“More than one in every 5 of these cas­es was dis­missed because the pris­on­er missed the new filing deadline.” 

The study also revealed that pris­on­ers on death row were more like­ly to receive relief that those who were not sen­tenced to death. King found that in cap­i­tal cas­es that had reached con­clu­sion in fed­er­al court by the study’s end, one of every eight death sen­tences had been inval­i­dat­ed. In addi­tion, she dis­cov­ered that after the imple­men­ta­tion of AEDPA — a bill designed to speed up fed­er­al habeas review — habeas cas­es now take longer to fin­ish. King said 1 of every 4 cas­es filed by death row inmates between 2000 and 2002 had not been resolved by the end of November 2006. 

King’s research found that the most com­mon rea­son for over­turn­ing a cap­i­tal case was the fail­ure of the state to pro­vide the inmate with rep­re­sen­ta­tion in state court that met con­sti­tu­tion­al stan­dards. That find­ing has King ques­tion­ing the val­ue of pend­ing reg­u­la­tions that would give the U.S. Attorney General the pow­er to approve faster death penal­ty appeals in states meet­ing Justice Department cri­te­ria for pro­vid­ing adequate representation.

King co-authored the study with Fred Cheesman and Brian Ostrom of the National Center for State Courts. It was fund­ed by Vanderbilt Law School and the National Institute of Justice, the research, devel­op­ment, and eval­u­a­tion arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.
(Vanderbilt University, August 26, 2007). Read more about the report. See Representation and Resources.

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