A recent four-part news investigation by McClatchey News examined the quality of counsel in four death penalty states. The series, “No Defense: Shortcut to Death Row,” explores capital representation in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Virginia. The research revealed that those states have extensive problems with adequate counsel, a fact underscored in the series through case examples that illustrate the systems’ inadequacies. The series found:

  • In 73 of 80 cases reviewed, lawyers did little or nothing to defend their clients at the critical stage where juries are weighing life and death. The attorneys often missed unspeakable abuse, abject poverty, and profound mental disabilities in their clients’ backgrounds. All of these can be factors that juries cite as the basis for a life sentence.
  • Appeals courts in the four states routinely refused to cite bad lawyering as a reason to overturn death sentences, despite several U.S. Supreme Court decisions setting standards for representation.
  • In one of four states reviewed, Georgia, a new office of new but well-trained lawyers is now handling all the state’s death penalty cases. These lawyers, with adequate resources and training, have had far different results. So far, none of their 46 clients has been sentenced to death.

(North Carolina News & Observer, January 20, 2007). Read the series. See Representation.

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