A (justifiable?) rant against lengthy death penalty appeals

Writing in the Houston Chronicle, Tom Kennedy has this lengthy opinion piece complaining about lengthy delays in the appeals of defendants convicted of killing cops.  Here is a taste:

We need to ask ourselves if the good guys are still winning the criminal justice game, especially when cop killers are involved….  Currently there are 10 men sentenced to Texas’ death row for killing nine Houston police officers. They have resided there an average of 12 1/2 years and counting since none is scheduled to pay the ultimate price in 2007….

Take death row resident Carl Wayne Buntion, 67, for example. This lifelong criminal enjoys writing poems and tending to his Web site, while Officer James Irby, the HPD officer Buntion killed on a hot summer day in 1990, never lived long enough to learn about the Internet.

This is not half bad punishment when you consider that after 17 years of life Buntion seeks pen pals and monetary contributions, as do his death row colleagues.  Meanwhile, the good guys’ appellate attorneys in the office of District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal grow frustrated with the large number of years that elapse as death penalty inmates exhaust their appeals.

Arthur L. Williams may yet establish the longevity record.  In 1983, Williams received the prospects of a lethal injection for the senseless killing of Officer Daryl W. Shirley. Williams used a pistol on Shirley while scuffling with the officer as he tried to serve a warrant at Williams’ apartment complex on April 28, 1982. 

The system has allowed Williams to live at least a quarter of a century longer than Shirley, the divorced father of two sons, both of whom became law enforcement officers.  Williams can look forward to many more years.  He is in the midst of his second round of state appeals, still an untold number of years away from graduation to the federal appellate level.  Williams’ Web site quotes him as saying he is struggling “for justice and freedom in the courts for killing an undercover cop in Houston (a case of self-defense!).”…

As in the old fable, the tortoise is winning the race in the guise of a cop killer on death row.  He has pen pals and Web sites while honest citizens and the surviving families of dead officers have only memories and gravesites.