Remainders

From Capital Defense Weekly

April 7, 2007

Remainders

In snippet ieces that don’t fit in well anywhere else this weekend are GTMO, Tennessee’s lethal injection quandry, Mumia, AEDPA, & a brewing California public defender scandal:

• Balkinization looks at every defense lawyers hero these days, Marine Corps Major Michael “Dan” Mori. Calling the results achieved for Australian David Hicks as the result of his representation “poetic justice” and that it “spectacularly vindicates” Maj. Mori’s decision litigation strategy, it notes “Mori didn’t back down, and we now see that his tactical decision to focus on political sentiment in Australia was exactly the right one for his client.”

• Nashville’s City Papers notes that “[t]wo Tennessee attorneys with extensive experience in death penalty cases criticized Gov. Phil Bredesen’s executive order to have the Department of Correction (DOC) review the state’s lethal injection protocols, saying on Thursday that the 90-day time frame Bredesen gave the department to fully investigate the deficiencies in the lethal injection process is ‘nonsense’.”

• Indy Media reports that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case will be heard by the Third Circuit on May 17. The issues will be: [A] jury instructions under Mills v. Maryland; [B] race based peremptory challenges under Batson v. Kentucky; [C] prosecutorial comment on the appellate process; & [D] bias of the PCRA trial court.

• SCOTUS blog looks at the AEDPA & the problems with its constitutionatliy & how the Court’s decision Carey v. Musladin interacts with those problems.

• Finally, in Riverside County California “the grand jury [is] looking into complaints that lawyers are leaving the public defender’s office because of low morale and poor management. As a result, criminal cases are languishing, sometimes for years, as they await trial or are handed off from one departing public defender to another, said current and former deputy public defenders.The problems have affected thousands of clients and their families.”