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The Meaninglessness Of Delayed Appointments And Discretionary Grants Of Capital Postconviction Counsel, Celestine Richards Mcconville

Celestine Richards McConville

This article addresses the right to postconviction counsel in capital cases - a right that is absolutely crucial to protecting innocent capital inmates from wrongful execution. It is no secret that indigent capital inmates who wish to pursue their state postconviction remedies have no constitutional right to counsel, and instead must rely on statutory grants of counsel. While numerous death penalty states have seen fit to provide a mandatory statutory right to postconviction counsel, a handful of death penalty states, including Alabama, provide only a discretionary right to such counsel. But in Alabama, which at the time of this writing …

Protecting The Right To Effective Assistance Of Capital Postconviction Counsel: The Scope Of The Constitutional Obligation To Monitor Counsel Performance, Celestine Richards Mcconville

Celestine Richards McConville

This article is an outgrowth of an idea developed by the author in a prior article, The Right to Effective Assistance of Capital Postconviction Counsel: Constitutional Implications of Statutory Grants of Capital Counsel, 2003 Wisconsin Law Review 31. The prior article argued that the government's decision to provide capital postconviction counsel triggers a due process-based obligation to make the right to counsel meaningful, which essentially means that the right to counsel must include the right to effective assistance of counsel. In the postconviction context, the effectiveness guarantee requires that the government must monitor counsel's performance to ensure, to the extent …

The Right To Effective Assistance Of Capital Postconviction Counsel: Constitutional Implications Of Statutory Grants Of Capital Counsel, Celestine Richards Mcconville

Celestine Richards McConville

The problem of incompetent counsel in capital cases is hardly a secret. Much of the attention, however, has focused on incompetent capital trial counsel. This article, by contrast, addresses the problem of incompetent capital counsel at the state and federal postconviction levels. Like the trial and direct review phases, the capital postconviction phase is critical to an accurate and reliable determination of guilt and death-eligibility. Thus, competent counsel is just as necessary during capital postconviction proceedings as it is during capital trial and direct review proceedings.

The Supreme Court, however, has made clear that there is no constitutional right to …