Clyde Charles is here with us from Louisiana today, and Kirk Bloodsworth is here from Maryland. I cannot imagine what that is like, but you will hear from them. Clyde and Kirk got lucky, if you can call it that. Perhaps the most urgent problem in the administration of our capital punishment laws is the failure of some states to provide competent representation to defendants facing the death penalty. Most of those defendants cannot afford their own lawyers.
Many states are simply unwilling to make sure they have proper representation.
The result is what you would expect. States that choose to impose capital punishment must be prepared to foot the bill, and the public and Congress have an obligation to make sure they do. Congress gives hundreds of millions of dollars to the States each year to spend on law enforcement, staff and prisons. I came to the Senate after working for several years as a prosecutor. The saddest fact of all, to me, is that the society facing this crisis is not a medieval one.