Justice O’Connor Backs Time Limit for Death Row Appeals

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, citing delays in carrying out death sentences that sometimes last decades, said Friday she is hopeful that proposed changes, including a time limit for seeking federal court reviews, will streamline the appeals process.

“There is no doubt that the capital cases across the country are posing a significant strain on the system,” she said. “We see it very acutely at the Supreme Court.”

O’Connor spoke to about 400 judges, lawyers and court officials at a conference of the 9th Judicial Circuit, which includes federal district, appeals and bankruptcy courts in nine Western states and two territories.

The 9th Circuit so far does not have as many death penalty cases pending as some other circuits, but the number of such appeals is expected to rise, court officials said.

Number of Cases

“In the last year the California Supreme Court has affirmed a large number of capital convictions on direct review,” O’Connor said, “and I’m particularly interested in this--as circuit justice in this circuit--because the 9th Circuit will be confronted with a significant number of capital cases in the next two or three years and beyond.”

Because there are no time limits on appeals against capital punishment, some Death Row inmates are seeking federal court reviews of their cases as long as 10 years after their convictions, she said.

O’Connor said that a committee of judges appointed by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is working out his proposal that condemned inmates be required to file requests for federal review within one year of exhausting their appeals at the state level.

She said there were 1,940 inmates on Death Row in June, 1987, and one study found that about 340 such cases would soon enter the federal appeals system.