The Clipboard: Unintended consequences of anti-terrorism law?

From an article¹:

Scott Brackett was never charged with terrorism and never faced the death penalty, but he's going to spend three times longer in federal prison than the judge who sentenced him thinks he deserves, because of a sweeping law passed in 1996 called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. (link)

This articles looks at some of the unintended consequences when Congress passes overly sweeping laws. In this case, the law was meant to deal with terrorism and death penalty cases but it ends up severely limiting a basic right (for writ of habeas corpus) for people who do not have either kind of case.

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Complete text of the article, Some oppose antiterror law's time limit on review, by Thanassis Cambanis

Scott Brackett was never charged with terrorism and never faced the death penalty, but he's going to spend three times longer in federal prison than the judge who sentenced him thinks he deserves, because of a sweeping law passed in 1996 called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

Like the legislation passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to shore up law enforcement's tools to fight terrorism, the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 prompted Congress to pass AEDPA. At the time, its supporters claimed it would speed up death penalty cases, eliminate frivolous sentencing appeals, and help the federal government prosecute terrorists.

But a growing chorus of judicial critics in Massachusetts - most passionately Chief US District Judge William G. Young - has chafed at the act's one-year deadline for criminals who want to appeal their convictions, saying they believe it has left some convicts with legitimate cases for a new trial or lesser sentences without sufficient recourse.

''Though the court remains convinced that Brackett's predicament is fundamentally unjust, it is without power to rectify Brackett's grievance,'' Young wrote in the recent decision.

However, no one in Congress has proposed revisiting the law to make it easier for prisoners to file petitions for habeas corpus, because it already provides federal judicial review of state cases, allowing convictions to be overturned for procedural mistakes and unfairness.

Last year, almost 25,000 prisoners nationwide asked federal judges to reverse their convictions - up 14 percent since passage of the 1996 law. Prisoner petitions make up nearly a third of the caseload of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which includes Massachusetts. The US Supreme Court heard a case earlier this month, Abdur'Rahman v. Bell, which raises several questions about a prisoner's right to challenge a sentence.

Young and the handful of judges who have written pointed decisions about habeas corpus fear that the rush to rid courts of groundless requests by convicts to have their cases reheard is also shutting out victims of injustice.

''Congress - in essence, the people of the United States - has determined, for various policy reasons, that it prefers that prisoners who fail to bring timely habeas claims remain in prison serving sentences three times as long as that actually provided by law for their crimes,'' Young wrote in the Brackett case. ''If he wishes to be resentenced, Brackett must persuade Congress to change the law or seek clemency from the President.''

Contacted this week, members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee said there are no plans afoot to revise the law, although a spokeswoman for Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts said he ''is absolutely in favor of restoring the full force of the writ of habeas corpus.''

Advocates of efficient courts say that the limits on habeas petitions simply balance out a court system that allowed criminals to tie up their conviction appeals for years, wasting resources that could be used to prosecute others.

''On the whole, I think the courts have been pretty generous to defendants, in order to avoid unjust results,'' said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California. ''The point was to push cases along. I think there have been very few cases of unjust results.''

The Brackett case is less complicated than most prisoner petitions. In 1998, Brackett was sentenced to nine years in prison for dealing methamphetamines; strict federal sentencing guidelines mandated the long sentence because Brackett had two previous Massachusetts convictions, making him a career criminal.

Within two years, however, state courts overturned his prior convictions, removing the career criminal label. Now, under the same federal guidelines, Brackett would get only three years.

But because of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Law, Young was not allowed to recalculate Brackett's sentence because Brackett didn't file his appeal within the one-year deadline.

''This result is deeply troubling,'' Young wrote. ''It is, in fact, patently unjust.''

In another case decided just weeks ago, the First Circuit overturned US District Judge Nancy Gertner's decision to release a man convicted of murder - on the grounds that he missed the deadline to file his petition.

James Lattimore, the defendant in that case, was convicted in 1983 after shooting his girlfriend's former husband. The victim had repeatedly assaulted and threatened his former wife and harassed her friends and neighbors, according to Gertner's finding. But the trial judge did not allow the jury to consider a manslaughter conviction, which would have carried significantly less prison time than the life sentence Lattimore is currently serving.

Gertner ruled that the lawyers who originally appealed Lattimore's conviction in state courts provided ineffective assistance. But in what Gertner called the ''`Alice in Wonderland' world of postconviction practice,'' Lattimore's case cannot be heard on its merits because when he finally turned to the federal courts in 1997 - after challenging his conviction repeatedly in state courts - he filed his appeal a single day past the deadline.

''His petition was still one day late and hence barred,'' Senior Circuit Judge Levin H. Campbell wrote for a three-member Appeals Court panel that ruled against Lattimore this month.

''One in Lattimore's shoes had no reason to be surprised that his petition was out of time,'' Campbell added. ''Ignorance of the law, even for incarcerated pro se prisoners, alone does not excuse an untimely filing.''

The First Circuit also rebuffed Brackett's claim, writing that he ''sat on his hands for a great many years'' before challenging his sentence in federal court.

Elizabeth Prevett, a federal defender who handles many prisoner petitions before the Court of Appeals, including Lattimore's, said the arcane and complex Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act is difficult even for trained lawyers to understand. And, she added, ''the people who have to deal with it have no legal education whatsoever.

''One year is not a lot of time.''

reference=http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/333/metro/Some_oppose_antiterror_law_s_time_limit_on_review .shtml