The Death Penalty Information Center reprints a chart sourced to the Bureau of Justice Statistics showing that the average time between sentencing and execution has increased since 1997.

Death row inmates in the U.S. typically spend over a decade awaiting execution. Some prisoners have been on death row for well over 20 years.

For whatever reason, the AEDPA hasn't brought about the speedy executions that Congress considered the measure of an "effective" death penalty. That didn't stop Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson from telling the press:

"It was unpredictable before,” Edmondson said. "You never knew when the end of the appeals process was going to come. It was very frustrating to victims and their families.”

When a prisoner will die is still unpredictable, even in Texas where executions move with the greatest haste. Perhaps Edmonson believes "predictability" resulted from the most vile AEDPA provision, the one that requires federal courts to remedy constitutional violations (usually by ordering the inmate's release unless a new trial produces another conviction) only if the violated right has been "clearly established" by the Supreme Court, and even then only if the state court's application of the law was not just incorrect, but unreasonable. A right that has been clearly established by all the lower courts won't do. And even if the Supreme Court has spoken clearly about the right's existence, constitutional violations go unremedied if the state appellate court misunderstood the law but its incorrect interpretation was reasonable. That provision made it "predictable" that many fewer habeas petitions would be granted.

Can you imagine sitting in prison and listening to your lawyer tell you: "The good news is that the federal court agreed with us that your constitutional rights were violated during your trial, and that the state appellate court made a mistake when it affirmed your conviction. The bad news is that the federal court thought the state appellate court's mistake was reasonable, so you're not getting a new trial."

"You mean," says the inmate, "I should have won a new trial on my state appeal, but I don't get one now even though my rights were violated?"

That the answer is too often yes is the sad legacy of the Clinton administration. And since the AEDPA's restrictions apply to all federal reviews, not just those in death penalty cases, it's a legacy that hurts a huge number of prisoners every year who lose their day in federal court. (To be fair, most Democrats in Congress were eager to embrace Clinton's "tougher than the Republicans on crime" strategy, including current VP Joe Biden. The AEDPA passed overwhelmingly.)

Additional TalkLeft commentary about the AEDPA is collected here.