Federal Funds for States to Prosecute Capital Cases

I am reading Contract With America. As many know, I am in favor of detailed plans and looking back, this was definitely bold of Republicans to put out there.

It doesn’t seem like much of Contract was actually implemented, at least not in the form it was presented in the Contract.

Part of the Taking Back Our Streets Act that Republicans proposed provided federal funds to states to prosecute capital cases. This came at the end of a rather detailed section that explained how criminals, once they have exhausted their appeals, challenge the constitutionality of their sentences (habeas corpus). Prior to the proposal of tax dollars being spent, a rather logical appeal to restrict how long a criminal has to challenge his sentence was made. Then came the call to fund states defense of habeas corpus cases. Huh?

It seems a stretch to fund a different level of government’s court cases. If a state wants to defend a case, it should be up to that government to do so, not the feds to do it for them. While The Fiscal Responsibility Act dealt with balancing the budget and line-item vetoes, most folks (at least conservatives) think that fiscal responsibility comes from reducing spending, not adding to it.

A lot of attention is given to originalism and how itapplies to the Supreme Court. It seems to me this “movement” is easily applied to the other branches of government as well. Where, for instance, in the Constitution would one find the provision for federal governments to fund state government’s court cases? It seems to me the Constitution lays out who is responsible for what and that those rights not specifically assigned to the federal government are left to the states or to the people.

So, if a state is tired of its convicted criminals from challenging the constitutionality of the sentence applied by the state, it should rectify it via amendments to its constitution. If it chooses not to, then the state has in effect decided to fund its own defense when criminals challenge in court.

Therefore, no need for the feds to get involved and certainly no need for federal tax dollars to fund it. TO me, that is fiscal responsibility.

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