Time: Wed Mar 12 07:32:07 1997
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Wed, 12 Mar 1997 06:35:16 -0700 (MST)
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 07:05:23 -0800
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: SNET: Habeas Corpus? (fwd)
<snip>
>TO: ringup
>FROM: DALE ROBERTSON (habeascorpus@hotmail.com)
>SUBJECT: GUTTING HABEAS CORPUS FOR STATE PRISONERS
>
>You post is one of considerable interest to me.
>I am pleased to provide a reprint of the
>National Trial Lawyer Association's response
>to the legislation last year. It is a fair overview
>of the subject in reponse to your request.
>Although a bit broken up due solely to the nature
>of the file that I retrieved off the net,
>it is still readable and will provide a significant
>response to your question.
>
>Let me know if you wish expansion of the answer to your question?
>
>Constitutionally,
>
>Dale Robertson
>habeascorpus@hotmail.com
>=====================================
>
>>>>Some prisoners we are trying to help are being told that after Apil 24,
>>>>1997, Habeas Corpus won't be allowed, according to the Anti-Terrorist
>>>>Bill passed in 1995.
>>>>
>>>>This is probably not true. Or if so, only regarding death row prisoners.
>>>>
>>>>Could someone research this or ask their Representative to provide a copy
>>>>of that Law in that regard?
>>>>
>>>>Candace
>>>>Juno only, email
>>>>ringup@juno.com
>>>>417-673-1906 fax
>>>>
>>>>-> Send "subscribe snetnews " to majordomo@world.std.com
>>>>-> Posted by: ringup@juno.com (Candace C Turner)
>
>
>
> Habeas Corpus
>
>
> Since our Nation's founding, the "Great Writ" of
> habeas corpus has provided a "fail-safe" mechanism,
> a last opportunity for independent federal courts to
> ensure that state convictions and sentences -- including
> death sentences -- have actually been imposed through
> our human system of justice within the bounds of the
> Constitution. In recent years, however, habeas has
> become a political scapegoat, mistakenly blamed for
> what some legislators believe are unreasonable delays
> in carrying out death sentences. Far from being Latin
> for the death penalty, however, habeas corpus is the
> most important constitutional insurance of our
> fundamental rights and liberties. Indeed,
> notwithstanding the political rhetoric, death penalty
> cases comprise only 1 percent or less of all habeas
> corpus cases, and on average actually take less time
> for the federal courts to process than do other types of
> habeas cases.
>
> NACDL remains opposed to the unconstitutional and
> unconscionable cutbacks in access to habeas corpus
> review rended by the recently enacted Title I of the
> "1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act"
> (the Act). We call upon Congress to revisit the
> subject, and to retract its hasty gutting of habeas
> corpus. Moreover, several essential, affirmative
> measures must be enacted by Congress immediately,
> as discussed below.
>
>
> The Great Writ of Liberty, Habeas Corpus is a
> Critically Important Safeguard of all Americans'
> Constitutional Rights and Liberties
>
> Placement in prison, but especially the finality of the
> death penalty, warrants all of the procedural and
> substantive safeguards our system of laws provides.
> As it is, reliable studies indicate that federal courts
> grant relief (often ordering retrial or resentencing) in
> up to 40 percent of the state-imposed death sentences
> they review. Habeas corpus provides a critical means
> of uncovering police and prosecutorial misconduct,
> which all too often causes wrongful convictions. In the
> past few years alone, numerous cases have come to
> light in which inmates, after spending years in prison
> or even on death row, have been proven innocent of
> the crimes for which they were waiting to die.
>
> Ask Randall Dale Adams, whose case was the subject
> of a feature film, The Thin Blue Line. Adams'
> conviction for murdering a Dallas, Texas police officer
> was overturned when a federal court, on habeas
> review, uncovered proof that prosecutors had coerced
> an eyewitness to identify Adams after the witness had
> already identified another man. Adams was released
> after spending 12 years in prison. Ask Clarence
> Brandley, a black janitor at a Texas high school, who
> was convicted in 1980 of raping and murdering a
> female student at the school. After spending nearly ten
> years on death row, Brandley was released when an
> appeals court discovered evidence that two other
> janitors, both white, had committed the crime, and
> that prosecutors had railroaded Brandley out of racist
> motives. Or ask Kenneth Ellman, whose due process,
> liberty, property, and Second Amendment rights were
> only taken seriously by a federal court after he had
> been unconstitutionally incarcerated on a contempt
> charge rendered and roundly upheld
> (unconstitutionally but oh so "reasonably") by the
> New York state court system. These are but a few of
> the recent cases in which the fallibility of the
criminal
> justice system has been demonstrated.
>
> Sociologists Bedau, Radelet, and Putnam, in their
> authoritative 1992 study, In Spite of Innocence,
> document 23 innocent people who have been wrongly
> executed in the United States in this century. This,
> even without the habeas corpus "deform" provisions
> recently passed as part of the runaway legislative train
> misnamed the "1996 Antiterrorism and Effective
> Death Penalty Act," which will vastly exacerbate the
> probabilities of such grave injustice. And this, before
> the doubly Draconian congressional defunding this
> year of the Post-Conviction Defender Organizations
> (fka Death Penalty Resource Centers), which were
> critically important, systemic pockets of legal
> resources and expertise for life and death habeas
> cases. See NACDL Legislative Policy, Indigent
> Defense Funding.
>
>
> Title I of the "1996 Antiterrorism and Effective
> Death Penalty Act": the Deformation of Habeas
> Corpus
>
> Despite the obvious need to preserve and even
> increase access of convicted citizens to effective,
> independent post-conviction review, to ensure the
> truthfulness and justice of their convictions and
> sentences, Congress passed and the President has now
> signed (effective April 24, 1996), a habeas law
> revision severely limiting such access. The Act limits
> both state and federal inmates to one habeas petition,
> with "deference" to be afforded even unconstitutional
> state court decisions; and sets up arbitrary time limits
> for the first time in the history of the Republic, on
the
> filing of petitions for constitutional review and
relief,
> and on the federal courts for hearing and rendering
> decisions -- again, even in cases of life or death.
>
> Specifically, the Act creates arbitrary and virtually
> insurmountable obstacles for prisoners by requiring
> federal courts to accept certain determinations of the
> trial courts even if they are constitutionally wrong, so
> long as they are not so "unreasonably" wrong as to
> flagrantly violate the smidgen of well-established
> United States Supreme Court precedent. For instance,
> as several lawyers, litigants and others in the pro-life
> protest community told Congress and the President,
> this threatens their ability to engage in First
> Amendment-protected protest activity, because the
> United States Supreme Court has yet to establish
> precisely, in all cases, how these interests are to be
> balanced against the privacy and other rights of those
> seeking to have or to perform abortions. (The
> Supreme Court has a case up for decision on this
> subject this very Term, in fact, Schenck v. Pro Choice
> Network Western, N.Y.) The Act's manifestly unjust
> "deference" provision is far beyond anything the
> Supreme Court has ever countenanced. It is something
> we have not seen in this country, at least since the
> 1867 Habeas Corpus Act -- that is, since the Civil
> War supposedly confirmed, at great human sacrifice,
> that we are indeed one Nation, joined together by one
> constitutional charter of individual rights and
liberties
> paramount to the proclaimed prerogatives of any
> governmental entity. See e.g., Wright v. West, 112
> S.Ct. 2482, 2497 (1992) (O'Connor, J.) ("We have
> always held that federal courts, even on habeas, have
> an independent obligation to say what the law is");
> Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177
> (1803) (establishing that it is the
>
>
>
>========================
>
>
>\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\
>"We do well to bear in mind the extraordinary prestige of
>the great writ, Habeas Corpus ad Subjiciendum in Anglo-
>American jurisprudence: "The most Celebrated writ in the
>English Law." 3 Blackstone Commentaries 129. It is "a writ
>antecedent to statute, and throwing its root deep into the
>genius of our common law.... it is perhaps the most
>important writ known to the constitutional law of england,
>affording as it does a swift and imperative remedy in all
>cases of illegal restraint or confinement. It is of
>immemorial antiquity... ."
>
>"It's root principle is that in a civilized society,
>government must always be accountable to the judiciary for
>a man's imprisonment: If the imprisonment connot be shown
>to conform with the fundamental requirements of law, the
>individual is entitled to his immediate release."
>
>Fay v. Noia, 372 US 391 (1963)
>\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\
>
>Dale Robertson
>habeascorpus@hotmail.com
>
>---------------------------------------------------------
>Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>---------------------------------------------------------
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