Justices Will Recruit Death Row Lawyers : Counsel: State high court takes over job to break backlog of inmates who need attorneys for their appeals.

In a move to reduce delays in death penalty appeals, the state Supreme Court has decided to take over the difficult job of recruiting lawyers for condemned inmates whose cases are languishing because they lack counsel.

The number of inmates without lawyers has reached an all-time high of 73--or about one-fourth of all those on Death Row at San Quentin prison. About half of the 73 inmates were sentenced to death over two years ago but still have no attorney to handle their appeals.

“The backlog is getting greater and greater and we felt we had a responsibility to do something about it,” Justice Ronald M. George, the court member assigned to review the problem, said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s not in the interest of the defendant, the prosecution or the court to have people on Death Row indefinitely without counsel.”

Beginning this summer, a special court staff monitor will recruit and screen private attorneys for appointment to represent Death Row inmates, virtually all of whom are indigent. The monitor also will try to speed the often cumbersome processing of trial court records for review on appeal.

The recruitment and screening of lawyers is performed by the California Appellate Project, a nonprofit corporation formed by the California State Bar in 1983 to find and assist lawyers in such cases. The group will continue to advise attorneys in death penalty cases.

George stressed that the court was “very eager” to retain existing standards for competence and experience required of counsel for capital defendants.

“With approximately 130,000 lawyers in California, I can’t help but feel there are enough qualified appellate attorneys to represent those 73 and others without counsel in the future,” the justice said.

Anthony Murray of Los Angeles, a former California State Bar president who chairs the California Appellate Project’s board of directors, welcomed the high court action, saying that the project’s most difficult and least rewarding task had been the recruitment of lawyers for capital cases.

Murray said that despite the group’s efforts, many lawyers were reluctant to take cases for four reasons: the relatively low, state-paid $75 an hour fee; the complex nature of the cases; the voluminous records to review, sometimes 5,000 or more pages of trial transcripts, and the prospect of years of work on cases as they proceed through the state and federal court system.

There was no reason to think the quality of counsel would decline under the new system, Murray said. “We have always maintained the highest standards and I’m sure the court understands the need to maintain those standards,” he said.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren could not be reached for comment, but aides provided a letter Lungren sent to the court urging that the project no longer play a role in recruiting and selecting counsel.

The California Appellate Project plays the role of the defense, the attorney general noted, and delay has become “the most important goal” of the defense in capital cases. “Thus, CAP has an institutional interest in not making timely recommendations for appointment of counsel,” he wrote.

Some defense lawyers were skeptical of the high court action. Dennis P. Riordan of San Francisco, who often represents capital defendants, said it was hard to see how the court could be more successful recruiting attorneys. “The only way to get more lawyers is by lowering the standards. . . ,” Riordan said.

Every year, about 35 or 40 death verdicts are appealed automatically to the high court. At present, six years or more may pass between the time a death verdict is rendered in a trial court and the automatic appeal is decided by the state high court.

If the state high court affirms the death sentence, subsequent appeals may go on for years in the federal courts. None of the more than 300 killers sentenced to death since capital punishment was re-enacted in 1977 have been put to death. Condemned slayer Robert Alton Harris, scheduled to die April 21, would be the first executed since 1967.