AEDPA

Laymen Explanation of Anti-Terrorist-Effective-Death-Penalty-Act (AEDPA)

There is a federal law, Anti-Terrorist-Effective-Death-Penalty-Act (AEDPA), which was seemingly enacted by the Congress and President Clinton with good intentions but which has had adverse results for tens of thousands of inmates, it has sped up the State & Federal Death Penalty (kill people faster), and places time limits on how long those convicted of crimes have to ask Federal Courts to review their cases for violations by State Courts. Inmates now have a year to file their cases in Federal Court once their State convictions are final.

For some, in theory, this seems fair, why? If a country/state has the death penalty, why should it take so long for the sentence to be carried out, and why should the convicted have an indefinite amount of time to appeal their State cases to Federal Court. At times, this could disadvantage the State, and a year seems reasonable. If the inmate fails to file on time, then they're barred from Federal Courts ever reviewing their State convictions.

Consequently, tens of thousands of inmates have been adversely affected.  If not reconsidered, that number could eventually total hundreds of thousands. We have taken the example of one inmate (LaMerle Johnson-others forthcoming) to show the outcome of this well-intended law. We chose him because his case resulted in case law {Johnson vs. Knowles, 541 F. 3d 933 (9th Cir. 2008)} that can be used by other States to justify State acts, which are reminiscent of slavery/Jim Crow actions.

One safeguard in the AEDPA law is that if someone convicted of a crime claims to be innocent of the crime, then there is a clause for Federal Courts to review their claims, it's called 'Miscarriage of Justice'. If the individual is guilty of the crime, in part or in whole (which the majority of the arrested are) and they miss the deadline, then the case will not be reviewed.

The above makes the AEDPA law seem fair, and reasonable.  After all, the guilty are in fact, guilty. But is it?

Sadly, “No”. Like any law that seems reasonable, when actually enacted there are unintended consequences. While it does make sense for the overall continuity of a judicial system that cases become final within a reasonable amount of time, those things not considered when enacting the law has corrupted it:

• It takes lawyers seven years to learn the intricacies of filing legal documents.  The majority of inmates have a 6^th/7th grade education. To think that they can properly file the documents in a year is unreasonable. Some inmates do not even speak English, yet they are held to the same one-year requirement.
• The conditions which inmates face: inadequate law-libraries, stresses and violence (lockdowns, etc.) of maximum-security prisons.
• Human nature, incompetent defense counsel and the lengths they may go to in order to ensure that their shoddy work is not reviewed, or corrupt state officials (Police, Prosecutors, Forensics, etc.) and what they may do to ensure that Federal Courts do not disturb their convictions. (Review LaMerle's writ of Certiroria)

The outcome has been that some people have had their human and American constitutional rights seriously violated by the states, but based on the AEDPA law, Federal Courts are prevented from correcting the harm because they're guilty in part or in whole. So, does that mean that in America if you have made a mistake (committed a crime) that there are no federal/human rights the states must adhere to?

In 1857 in the Dred Scott case, American Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of the United States Supreme Court, said regarding black people', 'They are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the words 'citizens' in the Constitution. Negro African Race is altogether unfit to associate with the white race and is so inferior, that they have no rights which the white man is bound to respect.'

In 2009 Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated that the United States Constitution did not guarantee that innocent people wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't be executed in America; America being one of the last industrialized holdouts to outlaw executions, which Russia recently (2009) did.

Americans question Countries such as Iran, North Korea, and other's for how they treat their citizens when those citizens break laws, how they interrogate, how they confine, and rights of appeal afforded to the convicted. But in America, the new Dred Scotts is not a race of people, but a class of them, inmates. lf in 2009 Justice Scalia stated that the American Constitution does not guarantee that innocent people are not executed, then those that are not innocent but fall under the AEDPA who have suffered serious human/constitutional injustice will receive what justice?