Atlanta Attorney Michael Mears defends people on death row from his office which used to be a church. Michael Holahan/Staff

Appeals process lacking resources

Web posted September 22, 1997

 Innocent on death row
 Appeals leave victims' families in limbo
 Waiting on Death Row
 Executions different in states
 Profiles of inmates on Georgia's death row

By Sandy Hodson
Staff Writer

Eleven agonizing years have crawled thhrough Fred and Carolyn Bunch's lives since Alexander Williams was sentenced to die for killing their teen-age daughter, Aleta.

In June, Mrs. Bunch stood on the steps of the historic federal courthouse in Augusta near tears. She had just seen Mr. Williams for the first time in nearly a decade. She had just heard a lawyer make what she feared was a rather convincing argument that Mr. Williams might have been sentenced to death unfairly because his previous attorneys did a poor job.

``Oh, what if the judge believes that's true? Do we have to go through this all over again?'' she asked.

U.S. District Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr. eased the Bunches' suffering Aug. 12 when he denied Mr. Williams' petition for a review of the case.

Mr. Williams has appealed that decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. If a three-member panel of judges agrees with Judge Bowen's ruling, Mr. Williams could ask the full court to reconsider.

If he loses that request, all that's left is one short step before execution - asking the U.S. Supreme Court for permission to appeal, a request rarely granted.

But if the federal appeals court disagrees with Judge Bowen's ruling that Mr. Williams was adequately defended, the process could begin all over again.

No one can comprehend the horror and grief of having a child murdered, the Bunches said. And no one can understand how scars of their sorrow are reopened when bits of news filter out about Mr. Williams' case every few years.

The state of Georgia made a promise to the Bunches when Mr. Williams was sentenced to die. The U.S. and Georgia constitutions promise that neither Mr. Williams nor anyone else will be punished unless fairly tried and sentenced.

:Click on the image above for a full-sized version of the graphic "Georgia's aggravating factors." Special

Deciding whether someone has been treated fairly takes years in the United States as death penalty cases inch through a nine-stage appeal process. About half the time, years will pass before a case reaches a court willing to say a trial was unfair and must be done over.

The reversal rate for death-penalty cases, 38.5 percent, is astounding when compared with the reversal rate in noncapital cases - less than 10 percent.

Of the 4,857 people sent to death rows from 1977 to 1995, 1,870 were removed because they had to be resentenced, retried or set free, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In Georgia, 264 people were sentenced to death from 1973 to 1996. Twenty-two have been executed, but 120 were resentenced to life in prison and the sentences and/or convictions of 11 more were overturned, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Long delays in resentencing or retrying seven men has led the Georgia Department of Corrections to move them off death row.

When a sentence or conviction is reversed, a death-row inmate heads back to the original court where he was tried and sentenced to death. The process takes years and builds on top of the grief suffered by victims' families such as the Bunches.

In 1988, federal appeals and trial judges got together to discuss the shocking reversal rate in death penalty cases. They persuaded Congress and the states to set up and pay for Capital Resource Centers - clearinghouses to help defense attorneys do better work in death-penalty cases and reduce the need to reverse so many cases. The first center was in Georgia.

``It was not because they love people on death row, but because it (the resource center) would facilitate the process,'' said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, a nonprofit public information organization.

But last year, Congress cut off all federal money for Capital Resource Centers.

``I think that's a shame,'' said former Georgia Supreme Court Justice Harold Clarke. He sat on the high court from 1979 through 1994, ruling in cases appealed before, during and after executions were outlawed and then reinstated under new laws.

``The best thing to do from the point of view of the state and the defense is to try an error-free case from the beginning,'' Mr. Clarke said.

Regardless of how one feels about the death penalty, no one wins if years later it's determined a person was convicted and/or sentenced to death unfairly and therefore unconstitutionally, he said.

To keep that from happening, states must do what they can to ensure quality legal representation, Mr. Clarke said. But Georgia's Capital Resource Center lost two-thirds of its money when Congress cut off the federal dollars, meaning most death-row inmates must look elsewhere for legal help in the state appeals process. Only Georgia and Mississippi don't appoint attorneys at that appeals stage.

It's impossible for someone who isn't an attorney to prepare an adequate state appeal, said Superior Court Judge Howard Craig of the Flint Judicial Circuit. His circuit includes Butts County, where death row is located and where all death row inmates file state appeals.

``I couldn't even appoint a lawyer if I wanted,'' Judge Craig said. Technically, the state appeals process is a civil matter and no one's entitled to appointed counsel on a civil matter.

``The judge's dilemma is, do you just sit there and do nothing (hoping an attorney will eventually volunteer to help an inmate) or make it go forward. It's not a very good system,'' he said.

Judge Craig handles the lion's share of death row inmates' appeals. Even under the best of circumstances, each petition can take a year; but under Georgia's system of farming out the cases to other Superior Court judges, it can take years, he said.

Alex Crumbley, who preceded Judge Craig on the bench, said if the state was serious about moving these appeals quicker it would provide resources that judges need.

``I always thought it was interesting that the state of Georgia had put the electric chair in a small rural county and didn't supply the help the judges needed,'' Mr. Crumbley said.

``If you're going to have the death penalty, it ought to work. The difficulty lies in the inability of the judicial system to administer the law in an efficient way. I believe in the death penalty,'' Mr. Crumbley said. ``But after all these years, the death penalty failure erodes public confidence not just in the death penalty, but in the law in general. I think that's a tragedy.''

Mrs. Bunch wonders whether it will ever be over - whether Mr. Williams will ever die in Georgia's electric chair.

``I don't believe in justice any more,'' she said.