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Today's New York Times carries the editorial, "A Dreadful Missed Deadline."
Alabama is a step from executing Cory Maples for a reason so grievously wrong that the case argued Tuesday at the Supreme Court should leave no doubt why the death penalty should be abolished. Besides being barbaric, case after case is rife with constitutional defects.
Mr. Maples was convicted of capital murder because he had incompetent trial lawyers, who admitted that they were “stumbling around in the dark.” He was then wrongly denied the chance to even raise the claim of ineffectiveness of counsel on appeal because of a missed court deadline — for which he was utterly blameless.
And:
A former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and other state bar leaders wrote in a brief, “Alabama’s capital punishment system is broken.” It would be grotesquely unjust for Mr. Maples to bear the consequences for the mistake that embodies this breakdown. The justices must order the federal review he seeks.
"Appeal chance lost in mailroom," is the Montgomery Advertiser editorial.
In a very real sense, Maples' right to appeal his death sentence was lost because of a mailroom mixup and the indifference of someone in a court clerk's office. Maples is not asking that he be released from prison.
Again, Maples is not a very sympathetic figure. And it is unlikely that he would prevail even if his appeal goes forward.
But the U.S. Supreme Court should side with Maples anyway and give him a new chance at an appeal, because even a tiny chance to avoid the death penalty should not be lost because of a mailroom mixup or a court clerk who couldn't be bothered to follow up on a returned notice.
In the end, this is as much about protecting the integrity and the credibility of the justice system as it is about Maples.
Earlier coverage of the oral argument in Maples v. Thomas begins at the link.
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