By Deborah Yaffe
The Recorder
May 23, 1996
A San Francisco federal judge suggested Thursday that he plans to hand a total victory to defense lawyers challenging strict new timetables for filing federal habeas corpus petitions in death penalty cases.
But by day's end, Northern District Chief Judge Thelton Henderson had issued no written decision in the case of Ashmus v. Calderon, 96-1533. Henderson said Thursday that he planned to issue a brief ruling by today, when he leaves for a 10-day trip abroad.
The Ashmus suit and a similar case filed in Pennsylvania are the first challenges to the federal habeas law enacted last month in an effort to speed up the slow pace of executions. Under the new law, part of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, only states with adequate procedures for appointing competent capital appellate lawyers can use the new timetables, which give prisoners six months to file their federal habeas petitions and require judges to rule on those petitions equally quickly.
Lawyers for Troy Ashmus, who was sentenced to death for the 1984 rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl, argue that California's procedures for appointing counsel and managing state appeals don't meet the law's standards. Henderson apparently agrees.
"It's reasonably clear to me that California does not qualify for the expedited review provisions," the judge said Thursday morning, prior to oral arguments on a motion to certify the suit as a class action on behalf of all the state's death row inmates.
Then Henderson announced his "tentative rulings," which appeared likely to give Ashmus' lawyers everything they want: class certification; a declaratory judgment that California does not qualify for the new timetables; and a preliminary injunction -- similar to the temporary restraining order Henderson issued earlier this month -- that would bar the attorney general from invoking the new habeas law in capital proceedings.
After listening to two hours of argument, the judge did not say whether he had changed his mind about his rulings.
Deputy Attorneys General Ronald Matthias and Morris Beatus argued that the suit is best treated not as a class action but as a test case, limited to Ashmus, for the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to resolve. If Henderson certifies the class, they argued, he will poach on the territory of fellow district judges who are presiding over their own capital cases and have a right to issue their own interpretations of the new law.
But Ashmus' lead counsel, Michael Laurence of Sternberg, Sowards & Laurence, said class certification is the most efficient way of resolving the interpretative questions. And an injunction and declaratory judgment are necessary, he said, to prevent the AG's office from pressuring inmates into adhering to the new deadlines out of uncertainty over whether or not they apply.
(The Recorder is an affiliate publication of Court TV.)
Copyright 1996, American Lawyer Media.
