washington -- The Justice Department is putting the final touches on regulations that could give Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales important new sway over death penalty cases in California and other states, including the power to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts.
The rules implement a little-noticed provision in last year's reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the attorney general the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases. The authority has been held by federal judges.
Under the rules now being prepared, if a state requested it and Gonzales agreed, prosecutors could use "fast track" procedures that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court.
The move to shorten the appeals process and effectively speed up executions comes at a time of growing national concern about the fairness of the death penalty, underscored by the use of DNA testing to establish the innocence of more than a dozen death row inmates in recent years.
Amid the public debate, the number of people executed in the U.S. has declined steadily since the mid-1990s.
California and several other states have moratoriums on lethal injections, stemming from legal challenges. Opponents say the way the states administer a three-drug lethal cocktail unnecessarily risks excessive pain for the inmate and therefore violates the constitutional bar against cruel and unusual punishment.
A federal judge in San Jose, citing a lack of training and supervision of the execution team, ruled California's application of lethal injections unconstitutional. State officials have proposed changing procedures to try to address the judge's concerns. A hearing is in October.
Prosecutors say many death penalty cases take far too long to resolve even when the issue of guilt is clear. Especially in the West, where the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has blocked many executions, cases can take decades to wind through the courts. In its most recent term, the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in three cases in which the 9th Circuit had reversed the sentence.
One of the cases involved a two-time Arizona murderer who told the sentencing judge: "If you want to give me the death penalty, just bring it right on." He was sentenced in 1990.
