Fast Track on Death Row

Alberto 'Gonzo' Gonzales, the Attorney General who cannot be trusted, may get the power to speed up state executions of prisoners on death row under new rules now being finalized. Under a provision of the infamous and misnamed "Patriot Act" reauthorized last year, the Attorney General who is the chief federal prosecutor, instead of a federal judge, is empowered to determine whether a defendant has received adequate legal counsel so the state can speed up the execution of a convict given a death sentence. It can take from twenty to twenty-five years for a defendant to exhaust his federal appeals before being executed in some Federal Circuits like the Ninth. The time period for appealing from state court to the federal level is cut from a year to six months. Strict deadlines are also imposed for federal judges to decide capital case appeals.

There are about 3350 death row inmates in the U.S. California has more than 600 that cost the state an extra $57.5 million a year to incarcerate. The state adapted it's gas chamber for use in lethal injection executions, but currently there is a moratorium on executions there. A legal challenge in federal court has been mounted that claims the injections violate the constitutional standard against "cruel and unusual punishment". Nationwide executions have been declining in number since the mid 1990s. Gonzales was a state supreme court judge in Texas before becoming Attorney General. That state has executed more prisoners than most countries except China. The Charlatan, aka the 'Compassionate Conservative', signed the death warrants of 152 prisoners while governor, a record number. Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen Spectre, both vocal critics of the Attorney General, have asked the Justice Department to delay implementation of the rules until October so adequate guidelines for approving a state's request for expediting executions can be drafted.