In a lec­ture at the Widener University School of Law, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas G. Saylor crit­i­cized the poor state of death penal­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Pennsylvania. He offered numer­ous cas­es in which death sen­tences were over­turned because attor­neys had failed to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence to the jury. Quoting from a spe­cial con­cur­rence he wrote on a cap­i­tal case involv­ing inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, he said, ​“Of great­est con­cern, these sorts of excep­tion­al­ly cost­ly fail­ures, par­tic­u­lar­ly as man­i­fest­ed across the wider body of cas­es, dimin­ish the State’s cred­i­bil­i­ty in terms of its abil­i­ty to admin­is­ter cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and tar­nish the jus­tice sys­tem, which is an essen­tial part of such admin­is­tra­tion.” He cit­ed a study of Philadelphia’s death-penal­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion sys­tem, which found that the sys­tem for appoint­ing lawyers was ​“woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate,” ​“com­plete­ly incon­sis­tent with how com­pe­tent tri­al lawyers work,” ​“punish[ed] coun­sel for han­dling these cas­es cor­rect­ly,” and unac­cept­ably ​“increase[d] the risk of inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel” in indi­vid­ual cas­es. Saylor said, ​“Every tax­pay­er should be seri­ous­ly con­cerned about the sys­temic costs of inad­e­quate defense for the poor. When the jus­tice sys­tem fails to get it right the first time, we all pay, often for years, for new fil­ings, retri­als, and appeals. Poor sys­tems of defense do not make economic sense.”

Saylor con­clud­ed with rec­om­men­da­tions for improv­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion, includ­ing greater pub­lic aware­ness of the prob­lem, bet­ter fund­ing for indi­gent defense, guide­lines for defense coun­sel in cap­i­tal cas­es, and bet­ter judicial decision-making.

(T. Saylor, ​“Death-Penalty Stewardship and the Current State of Pennsylvania Capital Jurisprudence,” Widener Law Journal, 2013.) See Representation and New Voices.

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