By Deborah Yaffe
The Recorder
May 28, 1996
California cannot use a new federal law to speed up death row prisoners' habeas corpus proceedings, because the state's system for appointing and paying appellate counsel falls short of the law's requirements, a federal judge has ruled.
The Friday order by Northern District Chief Judge Thelton Henderson in Ashmus v. Calderon, 96-1533, came exactly one month after President Clinton signed the new habeas provisions into law as part of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.
Henderson is the first judge to rule on a challenge to the law's applicability, although a similar suit is pending in Pennsylvania. The law gives death row prisoners only six months to file federal habeas petitions and forces judges to rule on those petitions just as fast -- but only if states appoint competent counsel to handle earlier stages of the appeal process.
Deputy Attorney General Ronald Matthias, who argued the case for the state, could not be reached Friday for comment on whether he plans to appeal. But in oral arguments Thursday, Matthias repeatedly said the AG's office is eager to let the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals resolve the issue once and for all.
Henderson's ruling gave lawyers challenging the new law everything they wanted: a declaratory judgment that California does not qualify for the strict new habeas timetables, a preliminary injunction barring the state from invoking the new law, and provisional certification of the suit as a class action on behalf of all 440 of the state's death row inmates.
But Henderson, who left Friday for a 10-day overseas trip, stayed his 17-page order until his return, promising a "more complete" explanation of his reasoning then.
In his preliminary findings the judge concluded that California's procedures for appointing counsel on capital appeals fail to meet the law's standards for several reasons. Among them: The state has no mandatory competency standards, fails to pay lawyers for raising certain habeas issues in the course of the direct appeal, and takes too long to appoint lawyers for convicted prisoners.
"California has always touted itself as the leader in providing resources," said Michael Laurence of San Francisco's Sternberg, Sowards & Laurence, who represented inmate Troy Ashmus. "It's clear that regardless of what the attorney general's office believes, the federal judiciary has other thoughts about this."
(The Recorder is an affiliate publication of Court TV.)
Copyright 1996, American Lawyer Media.
