But that's not necessarily true around the state, said John Lentine of Birmingham, who is president of the Alabama Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. The lawyers who are competent to take them get burned out. Lentine and others who have represented defendants in death penalty cases in Alabama say the pay is not worth the stress of having a client whose life is on the line. Compensation raised The Legislature recently has improved compensation, they acknowledged. There used to be a cap on the latter, but that has been removed.
Lawyers also can seek reimbursement for overhead expenses.
It's at this, the post-conviction stage, that Alabama is most deficient in assisting death penalty defendants, said Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative. Indeed, the American Bar Association has identified Alabama as its number one priority in persuading lawyers to volunteer to handle death row appeals. Crenshaw confirmed that he and other assistant state attorneys general often are up against high-priced lawyers from around the country who have been persuaded to represent death row inmates in Alabama. Sessions said he joins Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor in favoring higher pay for in-state lawyers willing to handle such cases. But he doesn't want Congress pressuring the Legislature through the threat of withholding crime-fighting money to make sure that happens.