THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 7, 1995 TAG: 9510070238
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Faced with the prospect of life in prison, former football star O.J. Simpson paid a ``dream team'' of lawyers, investigators and experts an estimated $10 million to defend him on double murder charges. After a trial that lasted 295 days, he was acquitted.
Faced with the prospect of death in Virginia's electric chair, mentally retarded ninth-grade dropout Joe Wise was assigned a 28-year-old attorney who had never been before a jury. The lawyer offered no evidence during his client's four-day trial. Wise was sentenced to death in 1984.
It was not until years after his sentencing that Wise got help from an experienced lawyer. Samuel W. Silver worked for a Philadelphia firm and represented Wise pro bono, or free of charge. He was assisted by the Virginia Capital Resource Center in Richmond, one of 20 organizations nationwide founded to assist lawyers and indigent clients facing the death penalty.
The help came too late for Wise, whose court-appointed appellate lawyers missed a filing deadline by 2 1/2 months, barring him from filing any further claims. He was executed in 1993, after spending almost nine years waiting for his court-appointed lawyers to do something on his behalf.
For dozens of other death-row inmates, however, the resource centers have provided the due process promised by the Constitution.
That may change.
Congress, which allocated $19.6 million for the centers this year, ended funding to the centers Sept. 30.
The measure is aimed at cutting government spending and accelerating the judicial process. But experts said it will accomplish exactly the opposite, slowing the process and ballooning the costs of representation while leaving the poor without a final line of defense.
The 20 centers ``provide the most effective and least costly representation,'' according to Chief Judge Richard A. Arnold of the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals, who heads the budget committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
``If they are eliminated, we will experience significant delays in trying cases because it will be difficult to find qualified counsel,'' Arnold wrote in a letter to Congress this summer.
It will also be more expensive, Arnold wrote. Instead of the $21.2 million it would take to fund the resource centers this year, it will cost between $37.2 million and $51.3 million to pay private attorneys to take the cases, he said.
A General Accounting Office audit backed him up. The average cost of representing death-row inmates in 1993 was $17,200 in cases handled by the resource centers, the study found. It was $37,000 in cases handled by private, court-appointed attorneys.
``Why are they (eliminating funding)? Because they think it makes them look tough on the death penalty,'' said Ruth Friedman of the Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center.
``It's grandstanding. Lawyers who don't know the law are not going to do these cases faster, and it's going to cost more money to pay them on an appointed, hourly basis. Talk about wasting people's money.''
The centers were created by Congress in 1988 to combat delays in death-penalty cases, which had jammed the federal courts. Many of the delays could be traced to inexperienced defense lawyers or to the absence of representation for some death-row inmates.
Before losing its federal funding last week, the Virginia Capital Resource Center had six lawyers, two investigators, three paralegals and an annual budget of about $1 million.
Now the center must get by on the $300,000 allocated by the state.
``Unquestionably, we're going to lose employees,'' said Gerald T. Zerkin, a Richmond lawyer who is one of the center's board members. ``Obviously, we won't be able to provide the level of service we've been providing.''
The center's future is uncertain, Zerkin said. Board members are searching for new sources of funding. In the meantime, there is much to do. Of the seven inmates scheduled for execution before the end of the year, four are without lawyers. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Joe Wise, a mentally retarded dropout, finally received experienced
legal help, but it was too late.
KEYWORDS: DEATH ROW by CNB