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Name those bad lawyers, court asked
A justice's gripe that a private registry handling death row appeals does "some of the worst lawyering I've seen" is challenged.
Associated Press
Published March 23, 2005
TALLAHASSEE - A state lawmaker has asked the Florida Supreme Court to back up its criticisms about some death row lawyers by naming names.
State Rep. Bruce Kyle, who chairs the House Judiciary Council, made the request in a letter to Chief Justice Barbara Pariente.
"Definitely there's conflicting evidence on whether or not there's a problem and we'll see if the Supreme Court gives me names, we'll see if there's a problem," Kyle said Tuesday. "If they don't, then it would seem to me that it's just rhetoric."
Justice Raoul Cantero recently criticized the performance of some of the private attorneys who contract with the state to represent death row inmates. The lawyers come from a state list, or registry, of private attorneys interested in handling capital cases.
"Some of the worst lawyering I've seen is from some of the registry counsel," Cantero told the Commission on Capital Cases, an oversight board set up by the Legislature to monitor death row appeals, in January. He added that some have little or no experience in death penalty cases.
"They have not raised the right issues from our review of the record," Cantero told the panel, which includes lawmakers and judges. "Sometimes they raise too many issues and still they haven't raised the right one."
But this month Kyle's committee heard testimony from state attorneys who handle capital appeals. Those lawyers said they had not seen any problems in the registry lawyers they had worked with.
Kyle said he didn't know if the House would do anything on the issue.
Craig Waters, a spokesman for the state's high court, said justices were not giving interviews on the subject of death row lawyers.
Florida has 368 people on death row. Most are represented by state-employed lawyers working in one of two regional agencies.
But the state also has a registry of private attorneys who handle cases in the northern part of the state.
Until two years ago, there were three regional agencies and they covered the entire state. But the Legislature abolished the northern office because of arguments that registry attorneys could get the job done more cheaply.
[Last modified March 23, 2005, 00:54:07]
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