The Supreme Court Monday refused to hear a case involving providing appointed counsel to death row inmates.

"The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider giving poor death row inmates more free legal help. The court had been asked to force the government to pick up the tab for inmates' legal bills during clemency proceedings and some last-minute appeals. Defense attorneys argued that a 1998 federal law requires death row inmates' lawyers to continue representing them through "every" stage of appeals."

"Congress made clear that people sentenced to death should not be abandoned by their lawyer as an execution date nears," University of California, Berkeley, law professor Charles Weisselberg told the court, on behalf of lawyers in a fees dispute. "Clemency is a critical part of our criminal justice system, and is particularly vital when the state seeks to take a human life."

"Many death row inmates are poorly education, retarded, or mentally ill, wholly unable to marshal the materials necessary to file their own clemency applications. They will be executed without clemency review," Weisselberg wrote in court papers."

The Bush Administration, through Solicitor General Ted Olson, opposed the funding.

The cases are In RE: Gary A. Taylor and William S. Harris, 01-1605, and In RE: Philip Alan Wischkaemper and Gary A. Taylor, 01-1623.