The Human Cost of Missed Deadlines

“While final­i­ty in judi­cial pro­ceed­ings is impor­tant to the func­tion of the judi­cial branch, that inter­est can nev­er over­whelm the imper­a­tive that the death penal­ty not be wrong­ly imposed.” – Florida Supreme Court Justice Jorge Labarga

In a cap­i­tal case, a missed dead­line can make the dif­fer­ence between life and death. Professor Eric M. Freedman and Paul Sessa of Hofstra Law found six­ty cas­es from 1996 – 2024 in which courts dis­missed all or sub­stan­tial­ly all of the prisoner’s claims with­out any review on the mer­its, sole­ly because the claims were not filed in time. Twenty-eight of those pris­on­ers have been exe­cut­ed. This list fea­tures cas­es in which lawyers missed dead­lines by just a few days and clerks lost filed paper­work, but the court pun­ished the pris­on­er for those fail­ures. Many of the pris­on­ers raised actu­al inno­cence claims that the court nev­er con­sid­ered. A few lat­er had their sen­tences reduced, show­ing there was mer­it to their claims all along.

Gregory Scott Johnson had until June 28, 1998, a Monday, to file his appeal. His lawyer mailed the peti­tion to the court on Friday, June 25. But the court did not receive the peti­tion until Tuesday, June 29 — one day late. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals acknowl­edged that Mr. Johnson’s lawyer ​“bun­gled the job” and should have known that appeals are only con­sid­ered filed once received by the court. But the Seventh Circuit ruled against Mr. Johnson:

“No one inter­fered with Johnson’s abil­i­ty to pur­sue col­lat­er­al relief in a time­ly fash­ion. He wants us to treat his own lawyer as the source of inter­fer­ence, but lawyers are agents. Their acts (good and bad) are attrib­uted to the clients they rep­re­sent. […] So it is as if Johnson him­self had made the deci­sions that led to the delay.”

The state of Indiana exe­cut­ed Mr. Johnson nine months lat­er.

The Death Penalty Information Center will update this list on an ongo­ing basis. Please con­tact Leah Roemer at lroemer@​deathpenaltyinfo.​org with sug­ges­tions for addi­tions, or if unable to access a deci­sion linked here.

To learn more about Professor Freedman’s research, see Eric M. Freedman, No Need to Wait: Congress Has the Power Under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to Abolish the Death Penalty in the States, 32 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 1049 (2024).