ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 4, 1996 TAG: 9606040069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press|
Openly concerned about its authority being curtailed by Congress, the Supreme Court held a rare late-term argument Monday over a new federal law limiting appeals by the nation's death-row inmates.
Behind the 60-minute session's dry language was a potentially explosive election-year question: How far can Congress go in trying to speed up the pace of executing America's most heinous criminals?
Several justices also focused their questions on the possibility that an innocent person might be condemned to death.
Justice Stephen Breyer asked whether the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed by President Clinton in April, would let the Supreme Court step into such cases. Georgia prosecutor Susan Boleyn said it would not.
But Henry Monaghan, representing Georgia death-row inmate Ellis Wayne Felker, argued that the historic function of death-row appeals ``is to prevent execution of an innocent person.'' He said the new law was ``not the work of Attila the Hun'' but would be ``completely contrary'' to historical practice.
The justices are expected to decide Felker's case before the current term ends this month, but they have another option - scheduling a new round of arguments for next fall. The complexity of Monday's session appeared to make that option a distinct possibility.
Solicitor General Drew Days, the Clinton administration's top courtroom attorney, joined Boleyn in defending the law. He said Congress had not stripped away all the court's oversight authority.
The high court has appeared as frustrated as Congress in recent years with the pace of executions, and began chipping away in the early 1980s at what it believed to be prisoners' abuse of appeals, called petitions for writs of habeas corpus.
Then Congress went further this spring, saying that most state prisoners, even those on death row, must be limited to one appeal in federal court.
The law requires that state prison inmates who fail in their initial attempt for help from a federal court get a three-judge appellate panel's permission before filing another federal appeal.
The appellate panel's decision, likely to be a rejection unless extraordinary new evidence is presented, is final.
That cuts out the Supreme Court's traditional role.
The justices could avoid the thorny separation-of-powers issue by finding that the new law preserves some of the court's authority - what lawyers call ``original'' habeas jurisdiction. But such a ruling might invite a flood of appeals from prison cells directly to the Supreme Court, a result the justices probably would find unsatisfactory.
Led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the court questioned both sides in ways that appeared to challenge their arguments. But the toughest questions were aimed at Boleyn.
Under her interpretation of the new law, Justice David Souter said, the high court's original jurisdiction appears to be ``in fact, gone.''
Felker, convicted of killing college student Joy Ludlum in Warner Robins, Ga., in 1981, has been on death row for 13 years. He was the first state prisoner ever denied permission to file an appeal under the new law.
Also Monday, the court unanimously upheld the military death penalty, saying the president properly enacted a key section aimed at helping jurors decide who deserves capital punishment. The decision upheld an Army private's death sentence in a Texas case.
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