Craig Washington: “The ones that are going to sell their soul are not going to be stopped by this bill.”

It is a fact that over 80 percent of the death row appeals, and specifically the reversals, are based upon lawyer error, that is, people had incompetent lawyers to try death penalty cases to begin with; right?

This is not the Washington-Edwards amendment. My amendment would have done a lot more, a lot more forcefully and a lot more, but the committee decided on your version rather than mine, which is quintessentially, in my judgment, a much…

So yours is the moderate, watered down habeas corpus reform that gets us beyond where we are now with all the delays?

The question was raised and has not been answered: Why would prosecutors oppose this amendment? It is like any work product. Once you put your work into something, you are duty-bound to defend that work product, are you not?