Monday, September 04, 2006

whattup in texas...again...

apparently lawyer's sleeping through trials in texas wasn't enough to warrant the strongest possible legal training for death penalty lawyer's in texas - oops!, my bad, the texas court of criminal appeals ruled that the lawyer dude in question DIDN'T SLEEP THROUGH THE IMPORTANT PARTS OF THAT TRIAL ... i forgot, sorry...

or, as in the following case, other forms of ineffective assistance of counsel did not justify overturning a death sentence upon appeal resulting in another questionable texecution...check this out courtesy of ...the death penalty information center...

Justin Fuller was executed in Texas on August 24. He was the 19th person executed this year, equaling the total number of people executed last year in the state. The San Antonio Express-News reported that Fuller had been represented by an attorney who "filed an appeal with incoherent repetitions, rambling arguments and language clearly lifted from one of his previous cases, so that at one point it described the wrong crime."

The appeal filed for Fuller copied wording that the attorney had filed for a different client and references blood on a gun used in a case seven years earlier. The brief contains irrelevancies, repetitions, and numerous typographical errors. Even the assistant district attorney was disturbed by the quality of the legal brief.

After Fuller lost his appeal, his representation was taken over by another attorney, but the original attorney continued to represent death row inmates. In one subsequent brief, the lawyer "spends 13 pages naming seemingly every document filed in the case. It then makes five claims that are almost word-for-word identical to claims in Fuller's case. The next 24 pages seem copied from his client's letters, so that they seldom if ever cite case law and occasionally lapse into first-person narrative." The lawyer is still on the list of "competent counsel" for Texas death penalty appellate work. (Maro Robbins, San Antonio Express-News, Aug. 24, 2006). See Representation.

uh, peace out, i think... <3

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I guess reading the news today about CA and FL suspending the death penalty (I use suspend becouse it will come back) I guess I have a issue that the murderers, rapists, ect... Feel that they get to dye a confy death. Personally I think they should suffer. None of this go to sleep and die. They have to know that the pain they feel the last few moments of thier life is the pain that the family's of thier victims will carry thier whole life. Personally I am proud to live in Texas. The only bad thing with the Death Penalty is that it is not used enough. I agree that alot of cases have a right to go through all the appeals and all the years. But sometimes when you know what happend, the crime is so horrible and with no remorse by the criminal that we cant have a system that takes them from the guilty verdict to the ground with a small step on the way that makes sure he feels the pain. God help the innocent (if thier are truly any on death row) and for those that are there, well FLIP THE SWITCH!