High Court Review Expected to Delay Executions

The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will review the constitutionality of a new law limiting federal appeals by state death row prisoners. The order is likely to halt most executions in the United States for at least the next two months.

The justices, who already had finished oral arguments for the term, put the case from Georgia on an unusually expedited schedule, with oral arguments scheduled for June 3, apparently with the intent of reaching a decision before recessing later that month.

At issue is a provision of the anti-terrorism law signed by President Clinton 10 days ago intended to reduce the number of court petitions that condemned inmates can file. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, has favored measures to shorten that often-protracted appeals process. The four liberal-leaning justices protested Friday that the court was taking up the matter too quickly.

The law was challenged by Ellis Wayne Felker, who had been scheduled to die Thursday. Felker was convicted of raping, sodomizing and murdering Evelyn Joy Ludlam, 19, after reportedly luring her to his home in 1981 by promising her work. Felker, convicted in 1983, insists he is innocent. His execution has been postponed while the court hears the case.

Felker’s petition, the first to reach the court under the new procedures, also tests the authority of Congress to take power away from the federal courts.

The anti-terrorism statute restricts the ability of federal judges to hear state prisoners’ appeals, known as petitions for a writ of habeas corpus, and requires judges to defer to state court determinations on whether a prisoner’s constitutional rights were violated.

While the immediate effect of Friday’s order was to virtually halt executions, if the court upholds the law, the result actually will be fewer delays in executions because the statute sets tight deadlines and limits the ability of a prisoner to win last-minute federal review.