Courts Accused of Rushing Capital Cases : Justice Marshall Charges System Severely Limits Rights to Appeal

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, reflecting the court’s sharp division over capital punishment, accused his colleagues Friday of supporting a “rush to judgment” that is speeding defendants toward execution before their appeals have been adequately reviewed.

“The Supreme Court has endorsed, and the states and courts have implemented, a scheme in which capital defendants receive less time to present their cases to the courts than non-capital defendants,” Marshall said. “As a result, courts must rule on the cases in a chaotic atmosphere.”

Marshall, a longtime foe of the death penalty, made his remarks in a speech to federal judges and court officials in Hershey, Pa. A text was made available in Washington.

On Heels of Reprieve

The speech came less than 72 hours after the court, by a 5-4 vote, granted a last-minute reprieve to a Florida inmate who had been scheduled to die in the electric chair Wednesday for a murder in 1977.

Ironically, five members of the court indicated that the inmate’s plea seemed to lack merit--and Chief Justice Warren E. Burger objected strongly to further delay of a sentence that already had been reviewed by 95 federal and state court judges.

Marshall contended that Death Row inmates are being caught in “an increasingly pernicious vise grip,” impeded on one hand by grossly inexperienced trial counsel and on the other by increasingly rigid restrictions on their rights to appeal.

“Contrary to popular perceptions, all capital defendants have not spent years filing frivolous claims in federal courts,” he said.

At present, more than 1,500 inmates nationwide face execution. Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 47 executions have taken place, 15 of which have occurred so far this year.

Counsel ‘Mistakes’ Cited

Marshall said that capital defendants frequently suffer from trial counsel who may even be handling their first criminal case or first murder case and who invariably make “very serious mistakes.” Some counsel fail to present mitigating evidence, and some even neglect to read state sentencing statutes, he said.

“I kid you not,” Marshall said, “precisely that has happened time and again.”

The justice criticized Supreme Court decisions that have limited the grounds for appealing because of ineffective assistance of counsel and that have allowed federal courts to use expedited procedures to review capital cases that already have been reviewed and upheld on direct appeal in state courts.

“The Supreme Court has authorized the reviewing courts to put these proceedings on fast-forward,” Marshall said. As a result, he said, reviewing courts sometimes took only “a matter of hours” to decide issues that in non-capital cases might take months or years.

Marshall conceded that there might be abuses in using the federal habeas corpus process to submit repeated appeals. But when such a petition is the first or raises new arguments, a defendant is entitled to a careful review, devoid of “unnecessary haste,” he said.

Until the Supreme Court guarantees defendants the opportunity to present their best case, judges, lawyers and public officials “must work within the existing system to provide that opportunity,” he said. The states, he said, should “slow the process,” setting execution dates further ahead to ensure more time to appeal.

Short-Lived Victory?

The case of the reprieve of William Jasper Darden, which has been before the justices twice, may prove to be a short-lived victory for Darden because of a peculiarity in court procedural rules.

The court first denied Darden’s request for a stay of execution by a vote of 5 to 4--but then granted it, 5 to 4, with Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. providing a key vote. Only four votes are required to grant formal review of a case, and Powell explained that even though he thought Darden’s claims had “no merit whatsoever,” he was voting to grant a stay in deference to his four colleagues’ desire for review during the court term that begins Oct. 7.

Burger issued a sharp dissent, noting that the issues in the Darden case already had been reviewed by the justices four times in the last 12 years “and have been litigated before no fewer than 95 federal and state court judges.” Justices Byron R. White, William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor also voted to deny Darden’s stay application.