In Practice
"Judges in Houston, Texas, have repeatedly appointed one local lawyer who is
famous for hurrying through trials like 'greased lightning' to represent
indigent defendants. Ten of his clients have been sentenced to death. During
one death-penalty case, he fell asleep on several occasions. Nevertheless,
the death sentence was upheld on appeal and the defendant has since been
executed.

..
"The Supreme Court has ruled that appeals based on lawyer error must prove
not only that a defence lawyer was incompetent, but that his incompetence
changed the outcome of the trial. Proving such a negative is often
impossible. Lower courts have used this ruling to uphold convictions, even in
death-penalty cases, in which the defence lawyer was drunk, asleep during the
trial or completely ignorant of the relevant law."

"Too poor to be defended" The Economist April 11th, 1998


"Between 1979 and 1989 ... Fred Zain, a state trooper working in the West
Virginia state police crime laboratory, falsified results of blood tests in
as many as 134 cases. He then moved to Texas, where he continued to fake his
results, sometimes in capital cases, until he was sacked in 1993. Ralph
Erdmann, a pathologist, faked over 100 autopsies, also in Texas and sometimes
in capital cases. His testimony helped to secure as many as 20 death-penalty
convictions. And the New York state police department suffered from a rash of
fingerprint fakes in the 1980s that affected more than 40 cases."
"Whose body of evidence?" The Economist, July 11th 1998



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