SENATE WEIGHS DEATH ROW REFORM

A new law proposed in the U.S. Senate might mean killers like Doyle Williams and Jerome Mallett would have been put to death years ago.

Williams, 48, of Fulton was executed Wednesday after 14 years on death row.

He was convicted in the 1980 slaying of Kerry Brummett, a man who could link Williams to the theft of prescription pads from a physician's office in the mid-Missouri town of Auxvasse. Williams also was convicted in the brutal killing of the physician, Dr. A.H. Domann. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the physician's murder.

But Williams gained a reputation as a jailhouse lawyer and filed appeals and used the federal and state court system to his advantage by delaying his death sentence.

Mallett, 37, was convicted in the 1985 shooting death of highway patrol trooper James Froemsdorf near Perryville on Interstate 55. He remains on death row, while his case has sat on the desk of U.S. District Judge Edward Filippine for six years with little action.

In February, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon asked the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to force Filippine to rule in the case.

But if a bill introduced last year in the U.S. Senate becomes law, appeals like those filed by Williams and Mallett might not linger so long in the justice system before finally having their sentences carried out or other federal court action taken.

Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., introduced a bill a year ago that would lead to habeas corpus reform, or changes in the appeals process for death row inmates.

According to Senate Bill 735, time limits would be placed on certain judicial processes at the federal level. The law also would allow some aspects of state and federal cases to continue simultaneously.

Some federal or state court actions currently are halted while the other court considers the case.

In Williams' case, it took 14 years before he exhausted the state and federal court systems. While a motion or other action was being considered by the state court, action on motions in the federal system were halted and vice versa.

A Southeast Missouri woman knows all too well the long and drawn out processes of the state and federal court system.

Sarah Froemsdorf, the wife of the trooper killed by Mallet 11 years ago, said last year on the anniversary of her husband's murder that she can't get on with her life until the judicial wrangling ends and Mallett's death sentence is carried out.

While she waits for the federal appeals court to decide if it wants to force Filippine to rule in Mallett's case, she urged others to contact their federal lawmakers this week and express support for the bill sponsored by Hatch and Specter.

The bill, S.B. 735, and its version in the U.S. House, H.R. 729, wouldn't allow federal judges to overturn state convictions in a few specific instances that currently are allowed.

The bill also eliminates successive petitions at the federal court level with the exception of very special conditions. When a death row inmate files a federal case, each claim the inmate wants to take up at the federal level must be listed. The proposal would make it a one-time chance in federal court for most cases. No successive claims could be filed in federal court.

But the proposal that would drastically affect the federal court system is that of setting time limits.

Under the proposal, the U.S. District Court would have 180 days to decide a death row inmate's petition. Then, the court of appeals would have only 120 days to decide the case after the final briefing is submitted. A few exceptions would extend the time limits, but only in rare instances.

Those time limits would be a far cry from the five to seven years that appeals for Williams and Mallett have sat on federal judges' desks.

Similar versions of the proposal have passed both the Senate and House, but conference committees must work out the differences.