Renewed Patriot Act could limit federal appeals for death row inmates

Under the new Patriot Act that President Bush signed into law Thursday, all states can now ask the U.S. attorney general to decide whether they qualify for a "fast-track" review.

Getting fast track is based on whether a state's court-appointed defense attorneys meet a minimum competency standard. If a state qualifies, its prisoners have less time to file federal habeas petitions, and the federal judges reviewing state prisoner appeals are more limited in what they can consider.

State inmates file federal habeas corpus appeals — the ability to question, post-conviction, whether their state representation, trial or sentence violated their constitutional rights — as a last resort to fight their sentence.

The federal circuit courts previously decided whether a state qualifies for fast track, but to date, no state has met the standards. In 1996, Texas was denied fast track because the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the state failed to meet competency standards.

Under the new Patriot Act, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would decide if Texas is qualified. If he did, the ruling would apply retroactively to prisoners currently on death row.

Critics said that without a circuit court review, safeguards fall to the wayside and prisoners get fast tracked to execution.

OK... Let's see. I am a bit confused here. Here's this law officially designated to "deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools ..." How is it relevant to that law at what rate of speed individuals already taken off the street and sitting on death row are actually taken out of this world?

In fact I would argue that if all the prisoners on death row in, say, Texas were taken out back and shot right this minute that would have a detrimental effect on the national security. For what if even one of them is not quite guilty as sentenced and really should not have been executed? Then we will have executed an innocent victim, a mistake a judicial review process may have caught and checked before it is too late. And hence, since national security is sum total of how secure each individual member of that nation is, such mass execution would have damaged our national security.

tags: dp  patriot  law