The Philadelphia Inquirer recent­ly con­duct­ed a review of death penal­ty appeals in Pennsylvania span­ning three decades and found a pat­tern of inef­fec­tive assis­tance by defense attor­neys. More than 125 cap­i­tal mur­der tri­als in the Pennsylvania, includ­ing 69 in Philadelphia, have been reversed or sent back by state and fed­er­al courts after find­ing that mis­takes by the defense attor­ney deprived the defen­dant of a fair tri­al. These do not include cas­es in which courts found that lawyers made obvi­ous mis­takes but ruled that the mis­takes did not affect the out­come of the case. The Inquirer found that lawyers defend­ing those fac­ing the death penal­ty often spent lit­tle time prepar­ing their cas­es, some­times neglect­ing basic steps such as inter­view­ing defen­dants, find­ing wit­ness­es, and inves­ti­gat­ing a defen­dan­t’s back­ground. For exam­ple, in a clos­ing argu­ment, Wilson Cooper’s lawyer quot­ed a Biblical pas­sage that called for the death penal­ty only in the killing of a preg­nant woman, for­get­ting that Cooper had killed a preg­nant woman. Legal experts agreed that there are sys­temic prob­lems in the state’s indi­gent defense pro­gram, exem­pli­fied by under­paid and over­worked lawyers who take on death penal­ty cas­es. In Philadelphia, court-appoint­ed lawyers receive $2000 for tri­al prepa­ra­tion in a cap­i­tal case and $400 per day in court. Critics say the fees, which are the low­est in the state, deter good lawyers from work­ing on death penal­ty cas­es and inevitably lead to rever­sals. Ronald D. Castille, the chief jus­tice of the state Supreme Court, recent­ly cit­ed ​“intol­er­a­ble” errors by defense lawyers, com­pound­ed by some ​“idi­ot­ic” appel­late briefs. The jus­tice, who recent­ly ordered a review of attor­ney pay rates, said that such prac­tices all but guar­an­tee delays and new court hear­ings that pro­long cas­es for years.

Ronald L. Greenblatt, chair­man of the Philadelphia chap­ter of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said, ​“The num­ber of rever­sals on these cas­es is stag­ger­ing. The attor­neys who are doing this work, because of the low pay, are not doing it the right way. We real­ly need it to stop.”

(N. Phillips, ​“In life and death cas­es, cost­ly mis­takes,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 23, 2011; DPIC will look at fur­ther find­ings from this arti­cle in a sub­se­quent post). See Representation and Studies.

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