"Agency scrutinizes state's capital murder trials for legal fairness," is the title of Michael Graczyk's AP report. It's via the Austin American-Statesman. Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning:
Brad Levenson wasn't thrilled to watch the condemned prisoner die, but he believed it was his duty to his client and to the state-funded agency he leads, charged with defending people who have been sentenced to death.
It was the first execution he'd seen.
"No matter how many pictures you see and other attorneys describing it, it's just a surreal experience," Levenson said of the lethal injection this year of convicted killer Cary Kerr.
"I was haunted by that for weeks, thinking there was something we could have done," he said. "I don't want this to sound insensitive. I needed to see an execution to do the work I do. \u2026 I had to see the start and the finish."
After years of handling death penalty cases as a federal public defender in California, which has the nation's largest death row but rarely carries out the ultimate punishment, Levenson now heads the year-old Texas Office of Capital Writs, an independent state agency tasked with scrutinizing capital murder trials to ensure that they were legally proper.
The Texas Legislature created the office two years ago after repeated instances of shoddy legal work by appeals attorneys representing capital murder convicts. The agency now handles the state appellate process for nearly all new Texas death penalty cases.
"So far, I think we are seeing the system work as we intended and hoped," said Sen. Rodney Ellis, the Democrat from Houston who sponsored the measure that created the agency. "Considering the mistakes made in Texas to date, we should pay for this safety net and pray it's adequate enough to get the job done right."
More than a dozen states have similar operations, but Texas was the largest without a public office to address death penalty appeals. None of the other states with capital punishment executes people as frequently as Texas.
The primary method of getting a new trial following a criminal conviction is to file a habeas appeal, which argues that a major legal mistake was made during the first trial. In Texas, courts generally will hear only one habeas appeal, and attorneys should raise claims early, as the cases wind through the judicial system.
Andrea Marsh, executive director of the Texas Fair Defense Project, a group that works to improve legal help for poor Texans accused of crimes, said the role of habeas attorneys is crucial.
Earlier coverage of the OCW begins at the link. All coverage is in the Office of Capital Writs index.
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