7.16.2005
Court Gutting in Congress (NYTimes.com)
EDITORIAL
Published: July 16, 2005
Congress is quietly considering whether to destroy one of the pillars of constitutional law: the habeas corpus power of the federal courts to determine whether an indigent defendant has been unjustly sentenced to death in state courts.
A bill making alarming progress in committee would effectively strip federal courts of most review power and shift it to the attorney general. That's right: the chief prosecutor of the United States would become the judge of whether state courts behave fairly enough toward defendants appealing capital convictions. If a state system was certified as up to snuff, then the federal courts would lose their jurisdiction and condemned defendants their last hope.
It is appalling that lawmakers would visit such destruction on a basic human right that's been painfully secured across three centuries of jurisprudence. Repeatedly, federal court scrutiny has laid bare the shoddy state of capital justice in the states. DNA science has drawn attention to the frequency of false convictions.
(More ... Court Gutting in Congress - New York Times) ¶ 17:32
Published: July 16, 2005
Congress is quietly considering whether to destroy one of the pillars of constitutional law: the habeas corpus power of the federal courts to determine whether an indigent defendant has been unjustly sentenced to death in state courts.
A bill making alarming progress in committee would effectively strip federal courts of most review power and shift it to the attorney general. That's right: the chief prosecutor of the United States would become the judge of whether state courts behave fairly enough toward defendants appealing capital convictions. If a state system was certified as up to snuff, then the federal courts would lose their jurisdiction and condemned defendants their last hope.
It is appalling that lawmakers would visit such destruction on a basic human right that's been painfully secured across three centuries of jurisprudence. Repeatedly, federal court scrutiny has laid bare the shoddy state of capital justice in the states. DNA science has drawn attention to the frequency of false convictions.
(More ... Court Gutting in Congress - New York Times) ¶ 17:32
