Death Penalty News

When a lawyer makes a mis­take, who suf­fers the con­se­quences? The ​“agency prin­ci­ple” says the client does, under the ratio­nale that clients choose their lawyers and autho­rize their actions. But courts uni­ver­sal­ly apply this prin­ci­ple to all attor­ney-client rela­tion­ships, includ­ing when indi­gent, iso­lat­ed death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers are appoint­ed attor­neys by the state, with lit­tle or no means of con­trol­ling their lawyers’ actions.  Many com­men­ta­tors have not­ed the prob­lems apply­ing this the­o­ry to those on death row. Building on work by Professor Eric M. Freedman and Paul Sessa, DPI recent­ly doc­u­ment­ed cas­es where attor­neys missed fil­ing dead­lines, result­ing in courts dis­miss­ing fed­er­al appeals for over six­ty men.

On May 1, Jeffrey Hutchinson, a Gulf War vet­er­an, was exe­cut­ed in Florida for the mur­ders of his girl­friend and her three young chil­dren. As he fought behind ene­my lines in some of the most dan­ger­ous regions on earth, bombs rat­tled and nerve gas cor­rod­ed his brain, caus­ing per­ma­nent dam­age that would con­tribute to the tragedy just a few years lat­er. ​“His mind was a casu­al­ty, just like any limb lost in com­bat,” a group of 129 mil­i­tary vet­er­ans wrote in a let­ter urg­ing Gov. Ron DeSantis to halt the exe­cu­tion. But no fed­er­al court ever con­sid­ered whether Mr. Hutchinson’s life should be spared because of the phys­i­cal and men­tal trau­ma he suf­fered in the mil­i­tary. His fed­er­al appeals were dis­missed not because they did not have mer­it, but because his attor­neys mis­cal­cu­lat­ed a filing deadline.