Supreme Court lawyer occupied by death penalty

WASHINGTON -- Every week Cynthia Rapp compiles a list of people, mostly men from the South, who have a date with a state executioner. She calls it the death list.

The Supreme Court lawyer tracks the dozens of executions each year. She is on call, around-the-clock, for appeals and must deal with stressed lawyers and her own jitters on nights when justices are deliberating stay requests even as a state prepares the death chamber.

Rapp's unofficial title: death clerk.

The job is among the most taxing and unpredictable at the Supreme Court, a place with limited access, rigid time schedules and airtight confidentiality. For example, the court would not allow Rapp to be interviewed.

The death lists, sent every Monday to the nine justices, have gotten much longer since Rapp was hired a decade ago to keep up with urgent filings. The odds of last-minute reprieves remain small.

"You don't get the feeling they are taking the time that these cases deserve," said Amy Donnella, who represents Georgia prisoners.

In the unending assembly line of death row appeals, Rapp said during a speech last fall, "Some of them generate more emotion than others."

The court will decide this month if it is cruel to execute mentally retarded murderers and if judges, instead of juries, can sentence someone to death. The decisions will affect hundreds of pending cases.

The court also finds itself confronted with questions of whether poor defendants are being adequately represented at trial. Two justices have expressed misgivings away from court, but so far the court has not delved deeply into the subject.

'The last stop'

Rapp, a 40-year-old former Army attorney and prosecutor, is the go-to staff member for death row lawyers and state attorneys. They know how to reach her after-hours. She knows how, in a pinch, to get in touch with justices by beeper or cell phone.

"The Supreme Court is the last stop," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a recent speech. "They are not always difficult cases, but they are always very trying for me."

Rapp spends much of her time organizing paperwork for the pressure-charged nights of executions, when she delivers the court's decision.

"It's a pivotally important role. It requires such a unique constellation of people skills and judgment and maturity," said Vermont Law School professor Michael A. Mello, who has worked with several death clerks.

Many lawyers know Rapp by her by voice only. Usually, she calls with a brief message: "Stay request denied."

"If she calls with bad news, I don't yell at her or swear or anything," said Dale Baich, an inmate lawyer in Phoenix who has worked with Rapp. "Someone's got to be the messenger."