Oklahoma Lawyer Entitled to Pay for Work on on LI Challege

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruling in Hooper v. Jones is available in Adobe .pdf format.

"Court reverses Okla. death row attorney fee case," is the AP report, via the San Francisco Chronicle.

An attorney for an Oklahoma death row inmate who challenged the state's lethal injection protocol should be paid for his work, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver handed down the decision in a case involving Norman attorney Jim Drummond, who represented death row inmate Michael Hooper. Hooper was executed in August 2012 following first-degree murder convictions for the December 1993 shooting deaths of his former girlfriend and her two young children.

The decision by a three-judge panel reversed a lower court ruling that had denied compensation for a portion of Drummond's work.

"I am certainly gratified that they recognize the role of attorneys in these situations," Drummond said. Drummond said he could not disclose the amount of compensation involved, but said criminal defense attorneys are paid $178 an hour in federal death-penalty cases.

Drummond was appointed to represent Hooper's challenge to his death sentence. The decision says Drummond was compensated for some of his work, including preliminary work on the lethal injection challenge, but not for the challenge itself.

On Hooper's behalf, Drummond sued the state claiming its three-drug lethal injection protocol was unconstitutional. The lawsuit sought to force the state to have an extra dose of pentobarbital, a sedative, on hand during his execution.

The Oklahoman posts, "Court rules public funds should be used to pay lawyer in Oklahoma death drug case," by Robert Boczkiewicz.

An appeals court ruled Wednesday that an attorney who sued over an issue with an Oklahoma death-chamber drug must be paid with public funds for his work on the lawsuit.

The 3-0 decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a sealed decision on Feb. 12 by U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange in Oklahoma City against Norman attorney James Drummond.

She denied his request to be paid with public funds, on grounds that his work on the lawsuit was not within the scope of compensable work under the federal system of paying court-appointed attorneys.

And:

The lawsuit failed and Hooper was executed on Aug. 14, 2012.

Drummond asked Miles-LaGrange to be paid $10,627 for his work on the lawsuit, which he took all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the federal system for court-appointed attorneys, Drummond and another attorney were paid by the district court with public funds in another case challenging the separate issue of the constitutionality of Hooper's death sentence.

Drummond said he thinks Wednesday's decision may be the first by any federal appeals court on compensation for challenges to lethal-injection protocols.

Earlier coverage of the lethal injection challenge in Michael Hooper's case begins at the link.  Related posts are in the lethal injection index.