In a lecture for the Widener University School of Law, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas G. Saylor (pictured) critiqued the poor state of capital representation in Pennsylvania. He outlined numerous cases in which death sentences were overturned because attorneys had failed to present mitigating evidence to the jury. Quoting from a special concurrence he wrote on a capital case involving ineffective assistance of counsel, he said, "Of greatest concern, these sorts of exceptionally costly failures, particularly as manifested across the wider body of cases, diminish the State’s credibility in terms of its ability to administer capital punishment and tarnish the justice system, which is an essential part of such administration." He cites a study of Philadelphia's death penalty representation system, which found "that the dynamics of the appointment system are “woefully inadequate,” “completely inconsistent with how competent trial lawyers work,” “punish[] counsel for handling these cases correctly,” and unacceptably “increase[] the risk of ineffective assistance of counsel” in individual cases." Saylor said, "Every taxpayer should be seriously concerned about the systemic costs of inadequate defense for the poor. When the justice system fails to get it right the first time, we all pay, often for years, for new filings, retrials, and appeals. Poor systems of defense do not make economic sense." He concludes with recommendations for improving representation, including greater public awareness of the problem, better funding for indigent defense, guidelines for defense counsel conduct in capital cases, and better judicial decision-making.

In his Sidebar column in the N.Y. Times, Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak recently discussed the concerns about states denying death row inmates information about how they will be executed. Liptak highlighted the recent execution of Michael Taylor in Missouri, where the state has made the pharmacy providing the drugs for lethal injection part of its "execution team," thus obscuring any failings the pharmacy may have. This secretive approach drew criticism from a minority of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and a dissent from three Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have granted Taylor a stay of execution to consider his due process rights to information about the state's method for killing him. As Liptak said, "[I]t is hard to see how death row inmates can argue that a given method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment if they are barred from knowing what the method is." Though Taylor was executed, other death row inmates are raising similar claims that may come before the Supreme Court.

UPDATE: Louisiana Judge Ramona Emanuel ordered Glenn Ford to be “unconditionally released from the custody of the Louisiana Department of Corrections.” (KTAL NBC News, Mar. 11, 2014). Glenn Ford, who has spent 30 years on Louisiana's death row is likely to be freed soon, after prosecutors filed motions to vacate his conviction and sentence. Prosecutors said they recently received "credible evidence" that Ford "was neither present at, nor a participant in, the robbery and murder" of which he was convicted in 1984. Ford, who has always maintained his innocence, was tried and sentenced to death by an all-white jury. One of the witnesses against him said at trial that police had helped her make up her story. A state "expert" who testified about the victim's time of death had not even examined the body. Ford's lead trial attorney had never tried a jury case before. A second attorney, two years out of law school, worked at an insurance defense firm. They failed to hire any experts to rebut the prosecution's case because they believed they would have to pay for the experts themselves. The Louisiana Supreme Court earlier said it had "serious questions" about the outcome of the trial, but did not reverse Ford's conviction. Ford may have been involved in trying to pawn jewelry from the victim that he received from one of the original codefendants.