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LOS ANGELES -The Bush administration is getting ready to speed up the executions of criminals on death row across the United States, effectively cutting out several layers of appeals in the federal courts so prisoners can be "fast-tracked" to the death chamber.
With less than 18 months to
go to secure a presidential legacy, George Bush has turned to an issue he has specialised in since approving a record number of executions while Governor of Texas.
The US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales - Bush's top legal adviser during the spree of executions in Texas in the 1990s - is putting the finishing touches to new regulations, inspired by recent anti-terrorism legislation, that would allow states to turn to the Justice Department, instead of the federal courts, as a key arbiter deciding whether prisoners live or die.
In some instances, prisoners would have significantly less time to file federal appeals, and the appeals courts significantly less time to respond.
On the question of whether defendants received adequate representation at trial - a key issue in many cases, especially in southern states with no formal public defender system - the attorney general would be the sole decision-maker.
Since Mr Gonzales is a prosecutor, not a judge, and since he has a track record of favouring death in almost every capital case brought before him, the regulations would effectively remove a crucial safety valve for prisoners who feel they have been wrongly convicted.
Elisabeth Semel, a death penalty specialist at the University California law school in Berkeley, said the intention of the proposed regulations was clear: "To make it more difficult for people who have been sentenced to death in state courts, including those sentenced without adequate representation and resources, to avoid being executed."
The regulations, first made public by the Los Angeles Times, will be subject to a public comment period extending into September.
They will then be enacted "as quickly as circumstances allow", according to a Justice Department spokeswoman.
The administration's enthusiasm for capital punishment runs counter to the recent trend away from the death penalty in many states.
Last year saw the lowest number of capital convictions across the country - 114 - since the death penalty was reintroduced in the early 1970s.
The development of DNA testing has raised uncomfortable questions about the safety of many capital convictions, prompting Illinois to call a halt to all its executions and triggering reviews in many other states.
Over the past two years doubts have also arisen over the most popular method of execution - death by lethal injection - as new medical research has suggested it may cause prisoners to die in horrible agony.
One of the cocktail of drugs typically administered, pancuronium bromide, paralyses the body and thus masks any pain without necessarily alleviating it.
California and half a dozen other states imposed moratoriums pending study of a new cocktail of drugs that would overcome the constitutional ban on "cruel or unusual" punishment.
Some states, including Tennessee, South Dakota and Florida, have either resumed executions or are planning to do so.
But California, which has 600 prisoners on its death row, shows no signs of executing anybody in the near future.
President Bush, however, has always been a death penalty enthusiast - the 152 prisoners he sent to the gallows in his eight years as governor of Texas set a high-water mark unmatched before or since.
According to official memos unearthed through a public records search a few years ago, Governor Bush would give the green light to executions based on no more than a half-hour briefing from Mr Gonzales, who was then his top legal aide.
Mr Gonzales, in turn, often omitted mitigating evidence that death penalty opponents deemed to be crucial to determine whether a prisoner deserved clemency.
At no time has Mr Bush seen any contradiction with his avowed commitment to the sanctity of life.
As president he has even instituted a National Sanctity of Human Life Day, which, he has said, "serves as a reminder that we must value human life in all its forms, not just those considered healthy, wanted, or convenient".
If the regulations come into effect, they would raise serious questions about the ability of wrongfully convicted prisoners to overturn their sentences Kenny Richey, a Scot who has been on Ohio's death row for close to 20 years for the death of a two-year-old girl who died in a fire, is still alive - and, it appears, on the verge of having his sentence quashed - only because of the intervention of a federal appeals court on his behalf.
Four years ago, a Missouri man called Joe Amrine was released after 17 years on death row following the collapse of every shred of evidence that led to his conviction for a jailhouse murder.
The state argued, with an entirely straight face, that even the establishment of innocence in his case was not a reason to stop his execution, because nothing had been procedurally incorrect about his original trial.
Again, it was a federal appeals court that first weighed in on Mr Amrine's behalf.
To date, 123 prisoners sentenced to die have been shown to have been innocent and released.
Anti-death penalty activists and lawyers have raised serious doubts about untold hundreds of others.
The prosecution argument is that it is unacceptable to sentence someone to die and then wait years - 17 or 18 years, on average - for the sentence to be carried out.
Keeping prisoners on death row is inordinately expensive - around $90,000 a year, on average - as are the legal costs associated with their appeals.
"If you are going to have the death penalty at all, it shouldn't take 20 to 25 years," the Arizona attorney general's chief counsel on the death penalty, Kent Cattani, told the LA Times.
"Either get rid of it altogether, or try to have a good system in state courts and then accelerate it through the federal courts."
- INDEPENDENT
