No Limits to Habeas Corpus Protections

Two simple propositions have set this country’s criminal-justice system above that of all other nations. We believe that a defendant is innocent until proved guilty and that it is preferable that a guilty person go free than an innocent person be punished. However difficult, slow and costly these propositions have made the meting out of justice, they have served us well for 200 years.

But other policy objectives now threaten to dominate the criminal-justice process: improving the “efficiency” of the courts and reducing delay and “frivolous” appeals. Procedural safeguards embedded in our Constitution and honored by generations of jurists have been recast as “technicalities” impeding the swift determination of guilt and imposition of punishment.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week limiting the number of federal habeas corpus petitions from Death Row inmates may be the most fundamental assault on habeas corpus since Lincoln suspended it during the Civil War. And coming after last month’s decision allowing the use of some coerced confessions, the ruling in McClesky vs. Zant is another link in the chain of Rehnquist court decisions slowly strangling criminal constitutional safeguards.

Convicted prisoners who claim their constitutional rights have been violated may bring a federal petition of habeas corpus asking a federal judge to reopen their case. And too often their claims have some validity. As of 1989, more than 40% of all death sentences appealed to the federal courts since states began imposing the death penalty again in the early 1970s were overturned through the federal habeas corpus process. Why? Defendants accused of capital crimes are often represented by inexperienced, overworked counsel. Their trials are sometimes supervised by inexperienced and overburdened judges. Errors are made and defendants do not always get a fair trial. Or new evidence exonerating a defendant comes to light after a conviction.

In the case that spawned last week’s ruling, the defendant learned nine years after his murder conviction that the state of Georgia deliberately placed an informer in an adjoining cell in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to have counsel present. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that Warren McClesky’s failure to raise this claim earlier constitutes an “abuse of the writ” process. Trouble is, McClesky couldn’t bring his petition earlier because the state withheld information on the informer for all that time.

Kennedy wrote that “perpetual disrespect for the finality of convictions disparages the entire criminal justice system.” But, unfortunately, so does a court concerned with speeding the pace of the criminal process seemingly at the expense of the rights of all citizens to a fair trial. Especially those 2,400 men and women on Death Row.