The American-Statesman series concludes it's series today on attorneys, a court, and a process that have failed to adequately review Texas death sentences. "Texas gets what it pays for," is here.
At least eight men lived, waiting to die, on Texas' death row before appellate lawyers uncovered the mistakes that led to their freedom.
Witnesses lied, prosecutors hid evidence or scientists flubbed their analyses — malicious or accidental errors that, however rare, had potentially fatal consequences. But when Texas imposes the ultimate, irreversible penalty, the process of finding and correcting those mistakes falls to lawyers who are providing, in some cases, what amounts to charity work.
A few lucky inmates attract deep-pocket law firms, including Ernest Willis, who was freed in 2004 after a New York firm spent more than $3 million to establish his innocence.
But the majority of death row inmates depend on court-appointed lawyers who are expected to do the job for $100 an hour, capped at about $25,000, the amount Texas sets aside for each writ of habeas corpus, a condemned inmate's last chance to challenge improperly administered justice.
Aggressive, conscientious lawyers frequently work for far less than $25,000, and some lose money on the deal, said Gary Taylor, a well-regarded appeals lawyer who wrote the "Texas Capital Habeas Corpus Manual" in 2005.
Beyond legal fees, the $25,000 also must pay for any private investigator, mitigation specialist, medical doctor and psychologist needed to fully investigate everything from the trial evidence to the inmate's mental health.
The Statesman's Chuck Lindell also has, " Older cases can be frustrating for new attorneys." LINK
When new lawyers were appointed in 2000 to handle the federal appeal for convicted triple-murderer Marion Dudley, they quickly concluded that the previous attorney had botched Dudley's habeas appeal in the state courts.
Rather than introducing new arguments, Houston lawyer Dick Wheelan had done "nothing more" than copy issues already raised and rejected in Dudley's direct appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Dudley's new lawyers told a federal judge in 2001.
What's more, they noted, Wheelan had done much the same thing in five previous death penalty cases, each time submitting copied arguments that do not belong in a writ of habeas corpus, an appeal designed to attack a conviction or death sentence with new evidence.
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