UPDATE: (Dec. 17). Gov. Kasich granted clemency to Ronald Post, following the Parole Board's recommendation. On December 14, the Ohio Parole Board (5-3) recommended clemency for death row inmate Ronald Post, saying his legal representation was ineffective and did not meet expectations for a death penalty case. Post is currently scheduled for execution on January 16, 2013. The Board's recommendation concluded: "[A] majority of the members of the Board find it impossible to overlook the glaring omissions, missed opportunities, and questionable tactical decisions made by Post's several attorneys. The various deficiencies in Post's representation, viewed in totality, call into question whether Post's death sentence was imposed through the kind of just and credible process called for by a punishment of this magnitude." His lawyers issued a statement, saying, "In the nearly 30 years since his case began, Ronald Post has too often been failed by the attorneys assigned to represent him, beginning at his trial." Post's original attorney advised him to plead no contest to the charges against him, with the expectation that he would receive a life sentence. Instead, Post was sentenced to death. Despite his plea, Post has maintained his innocence, and there was evidence of other suspects involved in the crime. The final clemency decision is up to Gov. John Kasich.
Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau has joined two other former prosecutors in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of William Kuenzel, an Alabama death row inmate sentenced to death in 1988. New evidence emerged in 2010 raising doubts about his guilt. According to Morgenthau's brief, two witnesses who testified against Kuenzel gave entirely different accounts that did not identify him when they first met with authorities. One of the witnesses admitted being involved in the murder. Morgenthau, who retired from the D.A.'s office in 2009 at the age of 90, asked Gil Garcetti, former Los Angeles District Attorney, and E. Michael McCann, former District Attorney of Milwaukee, to join him in asking the Supreme Court to hear the case. The three men each served over 30 years as prosecutor, and oversaw a total of more than 7 million cases. Morgenthau said he always opposed the death penalty and felt he had to act in Kuenzel's case because it reminded him of the Central Park Jogger case, in which he helped reverse the convictions of five teenagers originally convicted of rape and attempted murder. Of the death penalty, which was in place in New York from 1995 to 2007, he said, “[W]e reduced murder by 90 percent and never once sought it.”
Christopher Price is on death row in Alabama for the murder of a church minister in 1991. His current attorneys have asked the courts to enforce the ruling of Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark 1963 decision guaranteeing the right to counsel for all defendants. According to Price's appeal, his trial attorney failed to provide even a rudimentary defense during a penalty trial that lasted only 30 minutes. The attorney neglected to "investigate his background for potential mitigation evidence," to "speak prior to trial with his family members, friends and schoolteachers," and to "retain a mental health expert despite [the attorney's] previous acknowledgment that a mental health report was essential to presenting a mitigation case." The brief continued, "The only mitigation witness that trial counsel called was Petitioner's mother, Judy Files. Trial counsel had not previously interviewed Mrs. Files, nor had she prepared Mrs. Files to testify. Even more critically, trial counsel was unaware that Mrs. Files had physically and mentally abused Petitioner throughout his life and had allowed several men with whom she had romantic relationships to routinely physically, sexually, and emotionally abuse Petitioner as well." The lower courts have held that even if the attorney's performance was deficient, it was not enough to warrant relief. On March 4, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Price's case.
DPIC is proud to present its latest podcast, featuring award-winning author John Bessler discussing the historical roots of the death penalty and the current problem of arbitrariness in its application. Bessler is a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and author of Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders' Eighth Amendment. Prof. Bessler shares his expertise on the surprising resistance to capital punishment among some of the nation's founders and explores major Supreme Court decisions on this issue. He explains why the death penalty is open to constitutional challenge because its application is influenced by race, geography, and quality of representation. Click 
A forthcoming book, Fighting for Their Lives: Inside the Experience of Capital Defense Attorneys by Susannah Sheffer, explores the impact of the death penalty on defense attorneys with clients on death row. Through interviews with capital defenders, the author examines how attorneys try to cope with the stress of representing clients facing execution. Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, said, "This is an important book. The death penalty's impact is so much broader than we realize, and these attorneys are affected in ways that even I had not imagined. I am grateful to Susannah Sheffer for bringing these stories to light." Richard Burr, a prominent capital defense attorney, called the book "a beautiful, heartbreaking, and above all uplifting story that makes an essential contribution to literature on the death penalty." The book is available through Amazon and other outlets.
In his recent Sidebar column, Adam Liptak, Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times, discussed the plight that Alabama death row inmate Ronald Smith suffered at the hands of a drug-addicted lawyer and an unsympathetic court. In December, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Smith could not challenge his conviction and sentence because his lawyer failed to properly file his post-conviction appeal. However, as Liptak explained, the court did not "place much weight on the fact that the lawyer himself was on probation for public intoxication and addicted to crystal methamphetamine while he was being less than punctilious. In the months that followed, the lawyer would be charged with drug possession, declare bankruptcy and commit suicide." Smith did have a second lawyer, but he was in Tennessee and not authorized to practice in Alabama. Judge Rosemary Barkett (pictured) of the 11th Circuit dissented, saying clients should not be blamed for their lawyers’ mistakes, especially since clients on death row have no role in the selection of their lawyers and have no control over them. “It is unjust and inequitable,” she wrote, “to require death row inmates to suffer the consequences of their attorneys’ negligence.” Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court commented on the quality of Alabama’s death penalty system: “Nearly alone among the states, Alabama does not guarantee representation to indigent capital defendants in post-conviction proceedings. On occasion, some prisoners sentenced to death receive no post-conviction representation at all.” (
A recent editorial in the Miami Herald applauded a court decision finding that the costs of represening defendants in Florida death penalty cases should be kept separate from the judges’ annual budget. A state judge held it would be unconstitutional to have judges making decisions about attorneys' fees when the money for such expenses comes from the judges' own resources. The editorial stated, "We depend on the court system to dispense justice—period. Not justice on a budget, not justice on the cheap, not justice with 'ka-ching' in the back of a judge’s mind." The costs formerly came out of general state revenue. Death penalty attorney David Markus said the law would have made “judges think twice about paying a lawyer, knowing that he or she has to also think about paying his secretary or buying copier paper.” The editorial called on lawmakers to heed the recommendations of the Florida Innocence Commission, which made several recommendations to correct the high rate of wrongful convictions in the state. The editors wrote, “Lawmakers truly interested in reform would take the recommendations seriously, even though they require more-adequate funding. Instead, the Legislature has steadily chipped away at courts’ budgets for the past six years, while the volume of cases has increased. That’s a stumbling block to real reform.” Florida leads the country in exonerations from death row, with 23 wrongful convictions overturned since 1973. Read full editorial below.