"Petition faulting death-penalty pay dismissed again," is the title of Joseph A. Slobodzian's report in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.
For the second time in three weeks, a Philadelphia judge has dismissed on technical grounds a petition contending that court-appointed attorneys cannot effectively defend the poor in death-penalty cases because of the small amount they get reimbursed.
Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge D. Webster Keogh, administrative judge of the trial division, made the ruling Monday.
Despite a second loss for his petition, Marc Bookman, executive director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, was unbowed.
"The court has taken an ostrichlike approach to this critical issue," Bookman said. "Rather than embracing the opportunity to ensure adequate representation for indigent defendants facing the death penalty, court administration has decided to stick its head in the sand and hope the problem goes away."
And:
Philadelphia's flat-fee system in death-penalty cases is the lowest of all 67 counties in the state, Bookman's petition maintains.
In Philadelphia, for example, a lawyer who accepts a death-penalty case that goes to trial gets $2,000 for trial preparation. After the first day of trial, the court-appointed lawyer gets a daily fee of $200 for less than three hours and $400 a day over three hours.
In other counties, lawyers are reimbursed at an hourly rate ranging from $50 in Allegheny County to $125 in Lycoming County.
For a defense lawyer, capital cases are among the most time-consuming and complex to handle, commonly taking two years to come to trial.
The petition asks the court to ban Philadelphia prosecutors from seeking the death penalty unless court-appointed defenders are given enough compensation to properly do their job.
Bookman, a veteran public defender who specialized in capital cases, left last year to create his own nonprofit organization, performing research and providing expert advice to death-penalty lawyers.
Although the Philadelphia courts have been unreceptive, Bookman's petition has attracted support in the legal community.
The Philadelphia chapter of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has backed the petition, calling Philadelphia's $2,000 flat fee a "disgrace, plain and simple."
Earlier coverage of the petition begins at the link.
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