Why Do Those on Death Row Wait So Long Before Being Killed?

Uh, it was hard to fit the question into a good, concise title.

Anyways, in MPSIMS someone comments on how people condemned to death should get a bullet to the head immediately following the verdict.

My question is, why does that not happen now? Why does it take so long for someone to be put to death? Why do people wait years on death row? Does the paperwork really take that long?

Ever hear of the appeals process? In general, in any capital trial, somebody (often but not always counsel for the defense) has raised objections galore, which have been sustained or overruled. These are all matters of law, suitable for review in a higher court. For all of that, a higher court typicall can, though it usually does not, review matters of fact.

What does this have to do with delays before execution? Simply, a living person may have a death sentence reversed, or be re-sentenced on a lesser offense. An executed corpse is not in a position to take advantage of the fact that its sentence was reversed and its (former) name exonerated.

It’s not about how long it takes to process the Paperwork o’ Death, it’s about appeals.

After a person is convicted of a capital crime, they tend not to accept a sentence of “death” without a fight. They appeal to a higher court, and a higher one and a higher one, trying to overturn their conviction and/or sentence for every reason under the sun, from “this evidence was wrongly admitted” to “my attorney sucked.” And resolving those numerous appeals takes years. It’s built into the system, and it helps to ensure that the State is pretty damn certain of a person’s guilt before the actual execution.

The “my attorney sucked” justification, by the way, has apparently been abused by some criminal defense attorneys as a way to keep their clients from getting the needle. As in, when their client is sentenced to death, they’ll claim that they were themselves ineffective and for that reason the sentence should be reversed. Apparently, they felt this was a “good tactic.” My state (Texas) now prohibits attorneys who have been found ineffective in a capital case from trying any further capital cases, which ought to curtail the practice.

Dito what Polycarp said, but I’ll add a little bit:

Consider your use of the word “wait” in your question. The prisoner is most certainly NOT sitting around, bored, waiting for the sentence to be carried out. Rather, he is fighting like hell, with whatever legal arguments he can find, to get his execution overturned or delayed.

And a large proportion of the time they win their appeals. Does anyone have the exact percentage? How often does someone on death row either have their sentence reduced or the guilty verdict overturned?

What, they should hurry things along?? Get killed quicker.

If the convicted person finds the death sentence agreeable and doesn’t appeal, how short a time can it be between the verdict and the needle/chair?

I agree. And as I understand things, once the highest court in the State has affirmed the conviction, the defendant gets to use the “habeas corpus” procedure to attack the conviction in the federal system – which has 3 levels.

Not only that, but as I understand things, an appeal asserting “ineffective assistance of counsel” comes later if it’s the same attorney who did the first round of appeals as the trial.

So there can be a lot of delay.

Just this morning while driving into work I was listening to an NPR report about the rising number of exhonerations (Google says I spelt it right, I’m open to corrections) attributed to new DNA testing techniques years after the original conviction. Fat lot of good it would do if the execution had taken place out behind the courthouse minutes after the verdict.

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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E5D7103CF932A25751C0A9649C8B63&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/C/Capital%20Punishment

As far as the federal system goes, Timothy McVeigh was sentenced in 1997, made a motion to forego further appeal in 2000, and was executed in 2001. There are a few examples from state courts, but the names escape me at the moment.

Previous thread: Why does it take so long to execute in the US?

At least one appeal is mandatory. The convicted person can’t waive it.

Exonerations (Google will often return thousands upon thousands of hits for commonly misspelled words).

From a thread that now lives in the cornfield:

And from a staff report:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mwrongful.html

While the delay is an artifact of the appellate system, and not an intended feature, it sometimes helps prevent innocent people from being executed. Many exonerees who originally were sentenced to die were spared when their death sentences were invalidated–not based on the facts of their individual cases, but on constitutional problems with their state’s death penalty regime.

Also (and I fully realize that this is completely beside the point), the convicted prisoner doesn’t exactly get to spend his or her time at Disneyland while they are appealing their sentence. I only bring this up because every time the question posed by the OP is asked, it is almost invariably done so out of a sense of dissatisfaction at the delays involved in the process. Here in California at least, the holdings cells are 5’ X 7’—less than ten percent larger than a sheet of plywood. For any rational person, confinement in a space this small would be insufferable. Add to that the fact that people with antisocial personality disorder cannot tolerate boredom in any way, shape or form, and you can see that this must amount to sheer torture for the person awaiting appeal. On top of that, there is the knowledge that there are only two possible outcomes to this scenario—either the torture will continue interminably, or it will end in a very creepy death. On top of that, once the appeals are exhausted the convict is then placed in the unenviable position of being one of the extremely small minority of people who have foreknowledge of exactly when they will die. I personally derive no end of satisfaction from these facts.

Here in Tennessee, a capital conviction gets automatic, de novo review by the state Supreme Court. If the defendant wants to fight it (as they all do), there are twelve appellate procedures to go through before an execution can take place.

That’s probably a good thing.

http://www.comptroller.state.tn.us/orea/reports/deathpenalty.pdf

That’s a bit deceptive. The “13-step Death Penatly Appeals Process” is outlined on page 8 of the linked pdf (pdf p. 20). In the 13 steps, they include the DA’s decision to seek the death penalty and the the state court trial. Those aren’t appellate procedures. And after that, it appears there are two mandatory state appeals, which is typical of many states. The remaining steps are discretionary (petition for cert to the SCOTUS, post-conviction habeas in state and federal court). Five of these steps are in federal courts. For those discretionary, civil appeals to stay execution, the petitioner must file a petition to stay execution in order to delay execution until the appeal is decided. The Supreme Court has noted that filing a habeas petition doesn’t automatically entitle the petitioner to a stay: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=464&invol=1. The final step is an application for clemency. Those don’t automatically delay appeals, either. So of the 13 steps in the “appellate process” three aren’t appellate steps, five are federal discretionary appeals, and only two are mandatory state appeals.

Tennessee does not appear to offer those sentenced to death more appellate rights than any other state.

Let there be no confusion, then. I am 100%, completely and totally with the wholeness of my entire being, morally opposed to the death penalty. That’s not really relevant to the question, but I felt it necessary to clarify lest someone assume I’m trying to be snarky with the OP. It was really just a curious product of my morbid mind.

And the whole ‘‘appeals’’ thing does make a great deal of sense.