U.S. Standard Urged for Legal Defense in Capital Cases : Courts: Senior jurists suggest that murder defendants be guaranteed competent lawyers, from trial through appeals.

WASHINGTON —  A panel of senior federal judges, in an apparent rebuff to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, called on Congress Wednesday to enact legal safeguards for defendants in capital cases and Death Row inmates.

The Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy-making body for the federal courts, said that murder defendants should be assured of competent legal representation, beginning with their trials and extending through any appeals, up to the nation’s highest court.

The panel said also that federal judges should be authorized to overturn a death sentence any time they are presented with evidence that would “undermine (their) confidence” in the verdict or in the “appropriateness” of the penalty.

The two recommendations went to Congress as the Senate was preparing to consider new standards for the handling of death penalty appeals to the federal courts.

The suggestions contrasted sharply with a proposal that Rehnquist, who is chairman of the Judicial Conference, sent to Congress in September without consulting the other 26 members.

They also come at a time when the Supreme Court and Congress appear to be moving in opposite directions on the subject of death-sentence appeals.

The court, following Rehnquist’s lead, has been making it more difficult for federal judges to reverse death sentences once they have been upheld in a state’s courts. Rehnquist has complained in speeches that death penalty appeals languish for years in the federal courts because judges are too inclined to second-guess verdicts from state courts.

In September, Rehnquist and former Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. urged Congress to amend the Habeas Corpus Act to give condemned inmates a one-time, six-month period in which they might file appeals to the federal courts. Such a change would speed up the hearing of appeals and allow the states to carry out executions, they said.

The American Bar Assn., Senate Democrats and opponents of capital punishment complained that Rehnquist had ignored the problem of poor legal representation of murder defendants, particularly in the South. They said that many cases become hung up in the federal courts because poorly paid and inexperienced lawyers clearly botched the original trials.

In response to Rehnquist’s proposal, the ABA and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.) fashioned proposals that would force the states to provide murder defendants with competent lawyers. The Senate is expected to take up the Biden bill in the next month.

The recommendations announced by the Judicial Conference were much closer to Biden’s legislation than to the chief justice’s proposal.

The conference met behind closed doors at the Supreme Court Tuesday. When its recommendations were announced Wednesday, the panel did not disclose its internal votes.

Death penalty opponents were delighted with the outcome.

“This is a strong repudiation” of Rehnquist’s proposal, said Leslie Harris, counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington.

Biden, in a statement, praised the conference’s action as showing that “the nation’s judges clearly support the standards for counsel that are included in my legislation.”

The proposed standards of legal representation, if they become federal law, could have a powerful impact in the Deep South, where most executions are carried out. Southern states typically provide only minimal funds for defense lawyers in murder trials and subsequent appeals of convictions.

But such standards would have little impact in California, officials said, because the state already provides defendants solid legal representation, from arrest through trial and appeals up to the highest court.