Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 17, 1991                   TAG: 9104170619
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ATLANTA                                LENGTH: Medium

RULING NOT LIKELY TO LEAD TO RASH OF EXECUTIONS

Tuesday's high court ruling involved Warren McCleskey, who was convicted of killing an Atlanta police officer in 1978.

"I'd estimate that this has the potential to reduce the time in these cases . . . by a factor of years," said Georgia Attorney General Michael Bowers. He said the average stay on death row in Georgia is about 10 years.

There are more than 2,400 death-row inmates nationwide. The federal appellate path is from U.S. District Court to the Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court.

"There are a number of inmates on death row who have been through the federal court system once or perhaps even twice," said Florida Assistant Deputy Attorney General Richard Doran. "This decision is going to make it extremely difficult for them to gain further stays of execution."

But Mary Beth Westmoreland, senior assistant attorney general in Georgia, said a flood of executions in the days ahead should not be expected.

Trial courts still must schedule execution dates, she said. And prisoners can still file repeated appeals in federal court. But Tuesday's ruling makes it more likely those appeals will be quickly rejected, she said.

"This gives the District Court more guidance and has a stricter standard for when the District Court can actually consider a petition in the case," she said.

Bower said that of more than a dozen people executed since Georgia restored capital punishment in 1981, he believes each one filed more than one federal appeal. Those extra appeals "would be precluded, quite likely, by virtue of today's ruling," he said.

The decision "sounds like a disaster" for many defendants, said Leigh Dingerson, head of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

McCleskey said in his appeal that Georgia officials violated his rights by using a fellow inmate to elicit his murder confession. He did not raise the issue during an earlier appeal in 1981.

In rejecting the latest appeal, the high court ruled that criminals must prove that they had good reason for not raising a constitutional issue earlier and that their failure to do so harmed their ability to defend themselves.

McCleskey's lawyers said they lacked evidence to make the appeal until the Georgia Supreme Court ordered police records made public in 1987.

In Florida, 318 inmates are condemned to death, but fewer than 10 percent have made it through an entire first round of federal appeals, said Marty McClain, chief assistant in the office of Florida's Capital Collateral Representative. The agency represents death-row inmates.

One of those 318 inmates, Roy Allen Harich, is scheduled to be executed next Wednesday for killing a teen-age hitchhiker near Daytona Beach 10 years ago.

In Georgia, 118 inmates are on death row. Westmoreland said at least seven have completed their first trip through the federal appeals process.