Habeas Corpus Legislation

* The Times’ recent article and editorial about habeas corpus legislation in the anti-terrorism bill (April 16, 17) seriously miss the real effect of the amendments.

Death penalty cases receive more attention than virtually any other type of criminal case. But death penalty cases amount to an extremely small percentage (only about 1%) of all habeas corpus cases heard by the federal courts.

The proposed habeas corpus legislation will affect all habeas corpus cases, not just those filed by death row inmates. The primary impact of the legislation will be upon noncapital defendants. This means that anyone who believes that his or her state conviction violates the U.S. Constitution--such as the student protester, home schooler, anti-abortion activist and the marijuana-smoking AIDS patient--will be unable to obtain meaningful federal court review.

This is a grave injustice. The federal courts are fully capable of handling the habeas corpus petitions brought by noncapital defendants. Present law already requires the federal courts to defer to state courts’ findings of fact, and the courts are already able to dismiss a delayed petition if the prosecution is harmed by the delay. Present law already erects substantial barriers to successive petitions. There is nothing broken that needs fixing in noncapital cases.

It is true that capital habeas corpus petitions generally reach the federal courts years after conviction. But most of the delay is due to the time it takes state courts to review death sentences, and to problems in obtaining counsel for death row inmates. The claim in your article that inmates generally delay as long as possible before filing federal cases is simply not true. At this very moment, over 100 inmates in California languish on death row without legal representation. Anyone who wants death penalty cases to move through the system faster should focus his or her efforts on fully funding California’s criminal justice system. Gutting federal habeas corpus is not the answer.

CHARLES D. WEISSELBERG

Clinical Professor of Law

USC