Lack of funding builds death-row logjam

SAN FRANCISCO (MCT) — Thirteen years ago, Edward Patrick Morgan asked the California Supreme Court for a lawyer to investigate and challenge his 1996 death sentence for a murder in Orange County. The court has yet to find Morgan an attorney.

The inability of the state to recruit lawyers for post-conviction challenges, or habeas corpus petitions, has caused a major bottleneck in the state's criminal justice system. Nearly half of those condemned to die in California are awaiting appointment of counsel for these challenges.

This "critical shortage," as the state Supreme Court describes it, has persisted for years, despite lawyer gluts. The average wait for these attorneys is 10 to 12 years.

Criminal defense lawyers attribute the scarcity to inadequate state funding, the emotional toll of representing a client facing execution and the likelihood that the California Supreme Court will uphold a capital conviction.

"There are myriad reasons why dozens of lawyers who used to do these cases decide they can't afford it," said University of California, Berkeley law professor Elisabeth Semel. "I am talking about not going broke because you are trying to do the right thing for your client."

Prosecutors and death penalty supporters blame the culture of criminal defense work or, as Kent Scheidegger, legal director Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, put it, the zeal "to turn over every rock in the world."

"The idea that you have to pull out every stop in every case is excessive," said Scheidegger, whose group favors capital punishment. "There is a lot of pressure, but that doesn't mean the state has to or should pay for it."

Lynne Coffin, 61, a criminal defense lawyer who does death penalty cases almost exclusively, said fewer young lawyers are willing to take on the work. She said even she is uncertain whether she would have become a capital defender "knowing what I know now."

"It's a big toll on people to have clients on death row," Coffin said. "Even if they are nowhere near execution, they are very needy. Most have no family connections any more, no money, no friends, so the lawyer becomes the source of everything. … Emotionally it is very taxing."

Financially, the rewards also are elusive, she said. Most lawyers put their own money into prison accounts for their destitute clients for extra food and other expenses, she said.

"I know people think they are eating bonbons, but it is so far from the truth," she said.