Southern Death Penalty Lawyers Lack Pay, Experience, Study Finds

Many defense lawyers who handle capital punishment cases in the South are underpaid, inexperienced and more likely than their peers to get into professional trouble, a law publication reported Sunday.

The National Law Journal studied nearly 100 death penalty cases and concluded that the way poor defendants are assigned lawyers is flawed.

The cases studied were in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, where 80% of executions have taken place since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

The weekly law newspaper also checked professional records of about 1,000 trial lawyers who have handled capital punishment cases in those states since 1976 and found them to have been disbarred, suspended or otherwise disciplined at rates of three to as high as 46 times the overall discipline rates for those states.

Among other issues:

--Of 60 lawyers interviewed who had clients on Death Row, half said it was their first such case.

--State payment for lawyers for poor defendants in some of the states was low compared with other states. In Mississippi, the lowest, defense lawyers are paid a maximum of $1,000.

--Lawyers’ requests for money to hire investigators and experts often are denied.