STREAMLINE OR STEAMROLL?

In Times of Executive Excess and Legislative License, The Wronged Common Man Historically Has Looked to the Federal Courts to Make Right What Was Wrong. HABEUS CORPUS has been that wronged citizen’s last legal refuge. This has been true for death row inmates, for people wrongly convicted of crimes, for anyone who feels the powers that be be a little too comfortable in their self appointed thrones.  Justice is so inconvenient and it does take time to redress wrongs and make them right. Apparently that is too much time and too inconvenient for some.

The Washington Post yesterday printed an EDITIORIAL on the quietly Orwellian STREAMLINED PROCEDURES ACT OF 2005 now before Congress.   Steamrolled Citzens Act of All Time was too honest a label, but that is its effect.

CONGRESS HAS a novel response to the rash of prisoners over the past few years who have been exonerated of capital crimes after being tried and convicted: Keep similar cases out of court. Both chambers of the national legislature are quietly moving a particularly ugly piece of legislation designed to gut the legal means by which prisoners prove their innocence. . . . [MORE]

Habeas Corpus, the root liberty from which all freedom flowers, is under assault by powers that don’t want to be inconvenienced.  Habeas corpus still embodies the idea that you cannot be held without charge and whoever holds you must answer for it.  Apparently answering question may be considered inconvenient, but it still is the American way.  For now.

THE LOWLIGHTS SO FAR

WHAT A BITCH!  JUSTICE TAKES TIME  Look how those prisoners are seizing power! The House Judiciary Committee will have none of that nonsense!

Today, we are also examining Rep. Lungren’s proposal, H.R. 3035, The “Streamlined Procedures Act,” which reforms federal habeas corpus review of State court convictions. The Subcommittee, in the judicial security hearing and in examining child crimes, and even last Congress during consideration of the Justice for All Act, has gathered a substantial amount of evidence showing that federal court habeas review, particularly in the death penalty area, has suffered from extraordinary delays -- some as long as 15 years for a pending habeas petition to be resolved by a single federal judge -- and misguided application of precedent to frustrate the ends of justice.

States provide significant habeas review, and applicants are now using the federal review to frustrate justice, which once calls for reform aimed at ensuring that justice delayed does not turn into justice denied.
[MORE]

Habeas Corpus, the root liberty from which all freedom flowers, is under assault by powers that don’t want to be inconvenienced.  Habeas corpus still embodies the idea that you cannot be held without charge and whoever holds you must answer for it.  Apparently answering question may be considered inconvenient, but it still is the American way.  For now.

[STREAMLINED PROCEDURES ACT OF 2005]

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