Office of last chance



Texas will soon make sure that competent lawyers handle death-row  appeals

HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Aug. 2, 2009

Death-row appeals are life-and-death matters. Starting next year, 
Texas will finally make sure that they're done right.

“The status quo has been an international embarrassment,” state Sen. 
Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said recently, and we agree.

Private lawyers appointed by the courts have too often done lousy jobs.

As reported in a series of stories by the Chronicle's Lise Olsen, 
Texas inmates have lost their death-row appeals because their court-
appointed attorneys missed deadlines, didn't file appeals, or filed 
skimpy “skeletal” writs that appeared to have been cut and pasted 
from other cases.

But no more.

Under a new state law, sponsored by Ellis, Texas will establish the 
Office of Capital Writs, a nine-person office whose staff lawyers 
will manage death-row appeals in state court.

The office will be funded by redirecting money that the state already 
budgets for indigent defense.

That new state office is a good start, but it won't fix all the 
problems with Texas' death-row appeals. It won't handle federal 
appeals; it's up to federal judges to make sure that those lawyers 
are up to snuff.

And the new office will only handle new appeals, not ones that court-
appointed lawyers have already screwed up.

Sadly, it's those older cases that show how much we need better death-
row lawyering.

Keith Thurmond, for instance, says that he's innocent of the 2001 
murders of his wife and her lover.

His appeal first went astray when an inexperienced court-appointed 
lawyer botched his state writ of habeas corpus, the most important 
step in appealing the conviction. Then a different court-assigned 
lawyer blew the deadline for filing Thurmond's federal appeal.

Thurmond told Olsen that he worries that he'll be put to death before 
any appeals judge ever hears his claim to be innocent — or, for that 
matter, any other challenge to his conviction.

“I'm lost,” Thurmond said. “I don't know what to do. I haven't had no 
representation since I've been here.”

For him, the Office of Capital Writs comes much too late.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/6558141.html