<article name>

If you were on trial for your life, would you want a qualified lawyer to represent you?

The Common Sense Foundation released a study today that finds at least 37 people now on death row who had trial lawyers who would not have met today’s minimum standards of qualification.

The study (click here for a link) breaks important new ground in counting just how many people on death row were denied fair trials because of unqualified counsel. The study also lists the names of 16 people who have been executed whose trial lawyers did not meet these standards either.

In 2001 the state legislature created the Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS) and charged it with appointing and monitoring lawyers to represent people who cannot afford to hire their own attorneys. IDS required appointed capital defense attorneys to have some experience and knowledge of capital defense, and as a result, the number of N.C. death sentences declined sharply.

But the new rules were never applied retroactively, leaving us with a broken system in which whether you got a fair trial largely depends on when you were tried.

At a press conference today, IDS Director Malcolm “Tye” Hunter called the study’s numbers “very conservative,” arguing that he believes that most of those put on death row before IDS did not get fair trials.

The state must immediately grant new trials to the 37 inmates cited in the CSF study, and then launch a full investigation to determine how many more people on death row might have had similarly unqualified trial lawyers.

At least sixteen people have already been executed despite not having had a fair trial. North Carolina must have a moratorium on executions to prevent that number from growing.