Wilson Pledges Reforms to Shorten Execution Delays

Republican Gov. Pete Wilson joined Democratic leaders Thursday in pledging death penalty reforms aimed at cutting the time between a killer’s conviction and execution from about 15 years to five.

The state action was prompted by legislation that Congress passed this spring to speed up death penalty appeals in the federal courts. That change only applies, however, to states that have done a diligent job in their own court system.

California has so many problems with its criminal defense backlog that a federal judge last month found it ineligible for the expedited federal appeal schedule.

Wilson and Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren disagreed with that ruling and they have appealed the decision. But in the meantime, they also called for major improvements in the handling of California’s death penalty cases.

Their package of solutions would increase the compensation for private attorneys who want to help cut the state’s backlog. It also will create a new branch of the state public defender’s office to deal strictly with death penalty appeals. Total cost to the state would be about $23 million a year.

“At the heart of our system of laws is the belief that justice should be both swift and fair,” Wilson said at a news conference Thursday morning. “In no case is this more true than capital punishment where every delay denies justice to victims.”

Now, due to a shortage of expert death penalty attorneys, Wilson said, a convicted death row inmate can wait four years before a counsel is even assigned to handle the automatic state Supreme Court appeal.

Even with that assignment, Wilson said, it can take another five years--or a total of nine years--before the first appeal of a death penalty conviction is filed at the state Supreme Court.

If the conviction is upheld there, the case then goes to the federal level.

Congress recently placed strict time limits--some lasting about 180 days--on the schedule for death penalty decisions in the U.S. courts. Previously, there was no schedule for the federal rulings.

States that have not met minimum standards in their own courts require a longer federal review, officials said.

Lungren, who first proposed the recently passed federal reforms in 1982 when he was a Long Beach congressman, said the state’s new changes will bring it into compliance with the U.S. law.

“These proposals bring a solution to two nagging problems--the lack of counsel for condemned inmates at the earliest date and the needless delays in the state habeas process,” Lungren said.

In the Legislature, two of the three bills in the legislative package will be carried by Democrats--Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Culver City) and Sen. Charles M. Calderon (D-Montebello). Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) will sponsor the remaining legislation.

With bipartisan support, the plan’s backers predicted swift passage through the Legislature despite a protest from state Public Defender Fern Laethem.

“Everybody wants things to go extraordinarily fast and that is just not practically possible,” said Jim Ramos, a spokesman for Laethem. He said Laethem would try to change the bill in the Legislature.

The package of three bills seeks to create the Office of Post Conviction Counsel under the public defender. It would have a legal staff of 71 attorneys by the end of the summer of 1998. Another 32 attorneys would be added to the state public defender’s office.

Private counsel who apply for the state work and are deemed competent would be paid $125 an hour, up from the current rate of $95 an hour. Now, about 110 death penalty cases are being handled by private attorneys.

The rate increase is temporary and would expire when the state eliminates its backlog of 128 cases in which death row inmates have not been assigned counsel to start their appeals process.

Dan Kolkey, legal affairs secretary in the governor’s office, said he hopes that the backlog will be erased by the end of 1998. Then, ideally, there will be no lag in the time between a death penalty conviction at the Superior Court level and the assignment of an appellate counsel.