Capital Punishment in Alabama is not capital...

[TreasonousBastard]

A problem in many states is that inept or inexperienced lawyers are assigned to defend indigent capital defendants. They almost always lose.


http://dreamantilles.blogspot.com/2009/06/state-killing-travesties-of-justice.html

Today's New York Times tells the story of yet another travesty of justice from Alabama in a death penalty case. This is the kind of thing that unfortunately is no longer a revelation. It's what you might expect. And it's happened over and over again. The Times reports:

Kenneth B. Trotter had been practicing law for less than a year when an Alabama judge appointed him to assist two more seasoned lawyers in defending a man facing the death penalty.

<...>

“An inexperienced and overwhelmed attorney,” Judge Barkett wrote of Mr. Trotter, “realized too late what any reasonably prepared attorney would have known: that evidence of Wood’s mental impairments could have served as mitigating evidence and deserved investigation so that it could properly be presented before sentencing."

<...>

Clearly, the appointed defense lawyer was in over his head in the task of saving Wood from execution. He had one year of practice. He had no experience. He had two lawyers with him whom he couldn't talk. He had Wood's life in his hands. And he was being paid up to a maximum of $1,000 for the sentencing. It's a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe for the state's killing people who shouldn't be killed. But it's not unusual. And it's not just an Alabama problem. Not by a long shot.

And from the cited Time article:

Last month, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear Mr. Wood’s case. It will give the court a glimpse of Alabama’s capital justice system, which is among the most troubled in the nation. The state lacks a public defender’s office, elects judges for whom death sentences are a campaign promise, pays appointed lawyers a pittance and sometimes leaves death row inmates to navigate the intricacies of post-conviction challenges with no lawyers at all.

[ZombieHorde]

1. I did not know there was a Justice board.

I don't have much to add to your article, but it does make a decent argument against capital punishment.