The Process of Death -- Part II
Federal Appeals in Colorado Death Penalty Cases
Editor's note: Part I of this article described state court procedures and appeared in the first issue of the Newsletter.
When someone under a death sentence has finished state court appeals without success, he or she may seek relief in the federal courts. Federal courts have the power under the United States Constitution and federal statutes and court rules to consider a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in cases where a state prisoner contends that federal constitutional rights were violated in his or her conviction and sentence.
The right to petition for habeas corpus relief has existed for centuries in British and United States courts, and it is explicitly protected in the United States Constitution. Not too long ago, the United States Supreme Court described habeas corpus as a remedy designed to "interpose the federal courts between the States and the people, as guardians of the people's federal rights -- to protect the people from unconstitutional action." Reed v. Ross, 468 U.S. 1, 10 (1984).
A federal habeas corpus action is a civil, rather than criminal case, and civil cases normally are begun by the filing of a complaint or petition in federal district court. However, a federal statute requires the district court, if requested to do so, to appoint counsel to represent an indigent state death row prisoner. In interpreting this statute in 1994, the United States Supreme Court recognized the need for lawyers to assist in investigating and presenting habeas corpus claims in capital cases and held that lawyers must be appointed before the petition is filed. As a result, capital habeas corpus proceedings usually start with the filing of a motion for appointment of counsel.
Once lawyers are appointed to handle a capital habeas corpus action, they can hire investigators and expert witnesses to develop and evaluate all potential claims. When the issues have been evaluated, the lawyers prepare and file a petition which describes the claimed federal violations. Generally, the claims in the petition must have been "exhausted;" problems arise if the petition includes claims which were not presented to the state's highest court at earlier stages of the case.
Before April 24, 1996, federal courts granted relief and vacated death sentences in a substantial percentage of cases, perhaps because federal judges are more insulated from public and political pressure, or more inclined to protect federal constitutional rights. However, habeas corpus relief in capital cases was by no means easy to obtain. Significant procedural hurdles had been erected in cases decided by the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. Federal courts could refuse to consider the merits of a habeas petitioner's claims if he or she had not raised the issues in state court or had done so in such a way that the state courts had refused to hear them.
A particularly egregious example of this occurred in the case of Roger Coleman, who was executed in Virginia in 1992 despite substantial questions about his guilt. When a lower state court denied state postconviction relief, he attempted to appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court. However, his lawyers filed the notice of appeal three days late, and the state supreme court dismissed the appeal. The lower federal courts held that Mr. Coleman had procedurally defaulted on his claims, and that federal review was barred. The Supreme Court agreed, in a 6-3 opinion that said federal courts must show respect for state procedural rules and that, because Virginia had no responsibility at that stage of the case to ensure that Mr. Coleman was represented by competent counsel, he had to bear the burden of all errors made by his lawyers.
Death penalty proponents have been quite successful in creating the myth that appeals in capital cases drag on endlessly, and that the condemned abuse the system with repeated trips through the courts. In fact, in the past decade or so, the federal courts had imposed significant restrictions, usually, but not always, limiting petitioners to one habeas corpus action in which all claims had to be included. The situation got a lot worse four years ago, however.
On April 24, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet settled some significant questions about how this law will be applied, but it already has had a severe impact in capital cases. It has imposed strict deadlines for filing habeas corpus cases, for the first time ever, and it purports to limit the power of federal courts to conduct evidentiary hearings and to require them to defer to state court resolutions of legal issues. Finally, the act forbids second petitions based on newly discovered evidence unless that evidence shows that no reasonable jurors would have convicted the petitioner. These changes greatly increase the chance of executing an innocent person.
Coloradans Against the Death Penalty Newsletter -- Spring 2000
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