A variety of legal experts and national organizations have expressed strong concerns about a bill introduced in Congress that would greatly limit federal review of death penalty cases.

The American Bar Association called for rejection of the legislation:

S. 1088 should not be enacted. Its primary effect would be to insure that the federal courts did not hear compelling claims – including claims of actual innocence. Any possible gain in speed would be offset by the certain loss of justice. As the ABA has long advocated, true reform lies in the direction of eliminating the technical barriers whose elaboration now occupies so much of the time of the federal courts dealing with habeas corpus petitions in favor of having those courts promptly reach the constitutional merits.
(Statement of Prof. Eric Freedman on behalf of the ABA before the Senate Judiciary Committee, July 13, 2005 (executive summary)).

The New York Times editorialized about the repercussions that the bill could have:

Congress is quietly considering whether to destroy one of the pillars of constitutional law: the habeas corpus power of the federal courts to determine whether an indigent defendant has been unjustly sentenced to death in state courts.

A bill making alarming progress in committee would effectively strip federal courts of most review power and shift it to the attorney general. That’s right: the chief prosectuor of the United States would become the judge of whether state courts behave fairly enough toward defendants appealing capital convictions. If a state system was certified as up to snuff, then the federal courts would lose their jurisdiction and condemned defendants their last hope.

It is appalling that lawmakers would visit such destruction on a basic human right that’s been painfully secured across three centuries of jurisprudence.
(N.Y. Times Editorial, “Court Gutting in Congress,” July 16, 2005).

Prof. Barry C. Scheck of the Cardoza Law School and co-director of the Innocence Project also testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the bill:

It would bury the truly innocent under a welter of state and procedural bars. It would undermine efforts to raise the low standard of representation of the indigent tolerated by state courts. And inevitably, by keeping the innocent in prison and out of court, it will leave the real perpetrators free to commit more crime.
(Testimony of Prof. Barry Scheck, Senate Judiciary Committee, July 13, 2005).
See also Representation.