WITH TWO POWERFUL JOLTS OF ELECTRICity, Roger Keith Coleman was executed last week in Virginia. But the questions about his guilt could not so easily be disposed of -- in part because his court-appointed lawyers failed to put them to rest at his trial. On the night that Wanda Fay McCoy was murdered, Coleman claimed to have been at several points around the coal-mining town of Grundy. Shouldn't his lawyers have tried to retrace his steps on that night and search out witnesses? Shouldn't they have ventured into McCoy's or Coleman's home? At the very least, shouldn't they have presented to the jury the bag of bloody sheets and two cowboy shirts McCoy's neighbor found a few days after the murder?
Over six years ago, Jesus Romero was sentenced to death for taking part in the 1984 gang rape and murder of a 15-year-old in San Benito, Texas. He might ! have been sent to a mental hospital instead if his court-appointed attorney had presented available evidence to the jury that supported an insanity defense. "His lawyer had no idea there was information available that Romero was completely insane at the time of the crime," contends Nick Trenticosta, who handled Romero's appeals. During the course of his appeals, a lower federal court ruled that Romero had received ineffective counsel at his trial, but a higher appeals court reversed that ruling. Last week Romero died by injection in Huntsville, Texas.
Accused killers don't tend to be attractive people. Quite a few of them, perhaps the overwhelming majority, are guilty. But even the most dubious characters are supposed to get a fair trial, in which their attorneys are equipped to make the best possible case on their behalf. Because the majority of murder defendants are also broke, however, many of them get court-appointed lawyers who lack the resources, experience or inclination to do their utmost. When the Supreme Court restored capital punishment in 1976, it did so in the expectation that death sentences would be imposed in a fair and equitable manner. It hasn't always worked that way. Some people go to traffic court with better prepared lawyers than many murder defendants get. And yet no case carries higher stakes than a murder trial in the 36 states where the death penalty is legal.
The question of who defends accused killers has become more urgent lately. In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has been closing off the paths through which death-row inmates get federal appeals courts to review -- and review again -- their convictions. That creates more pressure to ensure fair trials in the first place. Perhaps the most serious restriction yet may be handed down in a Virginia case, Wright v. West. That case could permit the justices to rule, in effect, that federal appeals judges should work mostly from the assumption that the courtroom rulings of state-level trial judges are correct. The result would be to limit sharply the kind of questions the federal courts can reopen on appeal.