Panel to study delays in criminal appeals

• By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Sep 29, 2009 - Page: 1A

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The Louisiana Supreme Court is putting together a committee of lawyers to study why prisoners’ final appeals often take years to work through the legal system.

The most-publicized aspect of what is called the post-conviction process involves death penalty cases. Louisiana has not executed a death row inmate in seven years, partly because of the length of appeals.

Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Kitty Kimball said Monday the committee’s focus will not be to accelerate the implementation of capital punishment.

“It’s not our goal to try to hurry up and execute people,” Kimball said. “At least it’s not my goal to try to hurry up and execute anybody. But I think it is our goal to know that if someone has been sentenced that they may languish for years and years and years and years without being able to finalize their conviction or to find out that the conviction is not good.”

Kimball said improvements are needed in the post-conviction process.

Resolutions need to be reached and, in the case of a reversal, it is difficult to retry a decade-old case, she said.

Post-conviction relief comes into play once the standard appeals of a conviction are exhausted.

In post-conviction relief, defense lawyers argue that there were broader, constitutional violations during the trial, such as misconduct by lawyers or the judge.

Walter “Joey” Koon, for example, was scheduled to receive a new trial after a federal judge found the performance of his court-appointed attorney was “egregious, unprofessional and constitutionally deficient.’’

Koon was convicted in 1995 in the Baton Rouge shooting deaths of his estranged wife and her parents.

In July, he pleaded guilty in exchange for three life sentences.

Baton Rouge lawyer Jim Boren, who worked on Koon’s appeal, is one of the members of the state Supreme Court’s Committee to Study Post-Conviction Procedures.

Boren and 13 others will meet next month to start looking at the post-conviction process.