Marshall Project investigation, "Death by Deadline," looks at capital appeals impact of AEDPA

As noted here yesterday, The Marshall Project, an important new reporting outlet focused on criminal justice issues, is now running full steam and has now lots of notable new content on its slick website. And the big first feature from The Marshall Project is a lengthy two-part investigative report titled "Death by Deadline" focused on the legal and practical impact of the capital appeal restriction in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty ACt (AEDPA).  Below are links and key passages from each part of the report.

Part One: How bad lawyering and an unforgiving law cost condemned men their last appeal:

An investigation by The Marshall Project shows that since President Bill Clinton signed the one-year statute of limitations into law — enacting a tough-on-crime provision that emerged in the Republicans' Contract with America — the deadline has been missed at least 80 times in capital cases. Sixteen of those inmates have since been executed — the most recent on Thursday, when Chadwick Banks was put to death in Florida.

Part Two: When lawyers stumble, only their clients fall:

[A]n investigation by The Marshall Project has found that in at least 80 capital cases in which lawyers have missed the deadline — sometimes through remarkable incompetence or neglect — it is almost always the prisoner alone who suffers the consequences.

Among the dozens of attorneys who have borne some responsibility for those mistakes, only one has been sanctioned for missing the deadline by a professional disciplinary body, the investigation found.  And that attorney was given a simple censure, one of the profession's lowest forms of punishment. The lack of oversight or accountability has left many of the lawyers who missed the habeas deadlines free to seek appointment by the federal courts to new death-penalty appeals.