A recent review of death penal­ty cas­es in Pennsylvania con­duct­ed by the Philadelphia Inquirer (see ear­li­er DPIC post) has revealed a pat­tern of inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel lead­ing to exten­sive delays and rever­sals of death sen­tences. When the cas­es are lit­i­gat­ed a sec­ond time, now with more com­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion, they fre­quent­ly do not result in a death sen­tence. Prosecutors have called the sys­tem a great dis­ser­vice to vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Edward McCann, the first assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney in Philadelphia, said, ​“The length of time is uncon­scionable. To have to make phone calls to peo­ple 20 years after the fact and tell them: ​‘By the way, you know that death sen­tence you thought was final 20 years ago? We’ve got to talk to you about that.’ I think it’s uncon­scionable to put peo­ple through that.” And yet, accord­ing to the Inquirer​’s study, ​“lawyers found to have pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel are rou­tine­ly appoint­ed to new cas­es,” and some even become judges. Moreover, ​“defi­cient legal work extends to appel­late cas­es, where the very lawyers hired to cor­rect the errors of oth­ers them­selves prove inef­fec­tive.” Appellate lawyers have filed legal chal­lenges that cite lit­tle or no case law, and have gram­mat­i­cal errors. Some appel­late lawyers missed key fil­ing dead­lines or failed to appear for court hear­ings. Jack McMahon, a for­mer homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor and now a defense lawyer, point­ed to the low pay for attor­neys in cap­i­tal cas­es as the source of the prob­lem: ​“The gov­ern­ment gives peo­ple a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an attor­ney, but by low­er­ing the [lawyers’] fees to pau­per’s lev­el, they have severe­ly hin­dered that right,” he said. ​“To me, that’s inex­cus­able, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a homi­cide case, where the gov­ern­ment is either seek­ing to kill you or put you in jail for the rest of your nat­ur­al life.” Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas G. Saylor (pic­tured) called the legal work in some cas­es emblem­at­ic of the ​“uncon­scionable delay, dis­ar­ray, and incon­sis­ten­cies” in death-penal­ty appeals and called ​“for immediate reform.”

(N. Phillips, ​“In life and death cas­es, cost­ly mis­takes,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 23, 2011). See Representation, New Voices and Studies.

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