Court Opinion

ID: 9476468
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:56:48.11452+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:20.330437
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Chief Judge,
with whom POLITZ and JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges, join concurring:
I concur without reservation or exception in the opinion of the court. I write separately to express a concern that the continued normal application of ordinary legal procedures in this type of case produces a public perception of injustice which carries the portent to undermine the foundation of our system of law.
I.
The legislature of the State of Louisiana has ordained that a crime of the type committed by John Brogdon may be punished by executing the person duly proven to have committed it. The'Supreme Courts of both Louisiana and the United States have decreed that Louisiana’s death penalty statute is a constitutionally permissible enactment. This inferior federal court has no control over these fundamental premises.
II.
In a legally constituted forum, before a properly selected jury, the State of Louisiana proved beyond a reasonable doubt that on October 7, 1981, John Brogdon and an*344other tortured the life out of eleven-year-old Barbara Jo Brown. After hearing the proof, which included John Brogdon’s voluntary confession of gifilt, a jury decided that Brogdon was guilty. Another jury duly decided that he should be executed.
This court’s per curiam opinion recites an ensuing litany of direct and collateral review covering over five years. This is not unusual. It has become common in every capital case to see the process include conviction, sentence, appeal, execution date set, state collateral review, federal collateral review, stay, stay dissolved, successive state collateral review and successive federal collateral review. Indeed, proceedings have stretched even longer in many such cases.
III.
This court would be blind if it did not see that counsel for defendant deliberately withheld their challenges to Brogdon’s sentence until the very last possible time before each of his three execution dates. It is the clear perception of this judge that Brogdon’s counsel were bent on opposing his execution by confusion in addition to testing the points of law they raised. The delay this counsel action introduces into the system is only part of the problem.
IV.
The courts themselves have been slow to react to their new responsibility in today’s death penalty cases. During the period when the Supreme Court of the United States interdicted capital punishment and sorted out the constitutional propriety of statutes and trial procedures, the population of death row in many states multiplied. That dam has broken, and the rush of cases is upon the courts. Justice requires that in each instance capital punishment be imposed with maximum assurance of scrupulous legality. But, justice equally demands an assurance that such punishment be imposed when the minds of men still retain memory of the crime committed. Otherwise, capital punishment becomes a sort of second, albeit legal, crime.
V.
As the per curiam notes, this court has already moved to develop procedures to advance the time it gets adequate information on which to base its decisions in these cases. More must be done. Courts must develop ways to effectively complete direct and collateral review in far less time than now required. Expediting the review process doubtless will delay civil proceedings. That price must be paid. Counsel delays must be eliminated through sanctions, if not through persuasion. More counsel must be found who will shoulder the increased caseload. I write to plead for change to come and come quickly before respect for the law erodes beyond repair.