Capital cases—those where the death penalty was sought and then imposed—can last for decades. There are at least two reasons for this—they deserve the greatest attention and review because life is at stake; and the poor lawyering that led to so many capital convictions warrants that review and takes time to get corrected.

That phenomenon—poor lawyering—came to the fore in a recent challenge to a death sentence imposed over a quarter century ago. The context was a claim that there was a complete system failure—the quality of court-appointed counsel’s lawyering so poor that who was counsel was a determining factor in whether a death sentence was returned.

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