State Court chief justices from around the country had their annual conference this week. Among the resolutions passed was one opposing the Streamlined Procedures Act, a bill that would limit death penalty appeals. The only "nay" vote came from Wallace Jefferson, the chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, who said he hadn't had time to study the bill.

This bill is a bad idea. It would in effect kill habeas rights for prisoners - the chance for federal court review of a state court conviction and sentence.

Prisoners on death row generally reach federal courts using a legal petition known as habeas corpus — a centuries-old method of challenging allegedly illegal imprisonment. The petition gives an inmate a day in court to assert that his constitutional rights were violated at trial, leading to a serious error in the case.

The pending measures "may preclude state defendants in both capital and noncapital" cases from seeking relief in the federal courts "and may deprive the federal courts of jurisdiction in the vast majority of these matters, all with unknown consequences for the state courts and the administration of justice," the chief justices said in their resolution, passed at the group's annual meeting, in Charleston, S.C.

As I said here, this bill gets it a** backwards: