[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 24



USA:

Prisoners' time spent on death row doubles


The time prisoners spend on death row has nearly doubled during the past 2
decades. Legal experts predict it will rise further as states review
execution procedures and prisoners pursue lengthy appeals.

Waits rose from 7 years in 1986 to 12 years in 2006, the latest Justice
Department statistics show. In all five states with the most prisoners on
death row  California, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and Alabama  offenders
spend more time in prison than they did 4 years ago, a USA TODAY survey of
state records through 2007 found.

In California, wait times average nearly 20 years, a state commission
report in June says. It costs about $90,000 more per year to house a death
row inmate than other inmates.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's lethal injection
method, ending an informal halt to executions nationwide for 7 months. Of
the 10 states with the most prisoners on death row, 5 launched their own
reviews of lethal injection procedures in the past 2 years. Those resulted
in suspensions or delays in executions.

Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno says lethal injection
challenges create a "snowball effect" that prolong death row waits.

"Death penalty cases should be the highest priority for the courts," says
Clay Crenshaw, chief of Alabama's death penalty litigation unit. "It isn't
any more." Crenshaw says courts take about 5 years to rule on appeals. The
3 offenders executed in Alabama in 2007 spent an average of 23 years on
death row.

The wait times amount to prisoners getting "2 distinct punishments": the
death sentence and years in solitary confinement, says Richard Dieter of
the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes the death penalty.

The California commission said excessive delays had rendered the nation's
largest death penalty system "dysfunctional" and in danger of collapse.

"Death row was only supposed to be temporary," Denno says. "Now we have
inmates on death row for more than a quarter-century."

(source: USA Today)