Twenty-seven years ago, the ultimate nightmare of every parent of a teenage girl came true for the parents of 15-year-old Susan Jordan. She walked to school one morning and never arrived. Albert Greenwood Brown had raped and murdered her. He had raped before, but this time he made sure not to leave a living witness.

The federal habeas case was decided by the Ninth Circuit today. The three judge panel, without dissent, affirmed denial of habeas. The case had previously been reviewed by the California Supreme Court three times and by the federal district court.

State court proceedings took far too long, but even after the state courts were finished, this case took another eight years in federal court. What was the claimed injustice that justified dragging out this already extended case another eight years? Not much. No guilt-phase claims even justified a certificate of appealability. The penalty phase claims are weak allegations that defense counsel might have handled the mental expert better and might have done a better job digging up "abuse excuse" evidence. Nothing defense counsel might have presented comes remotely close to outweighing the facts that Brown raped a teenage girl and had done it before.

Cases such as this illustrate that federal habeas review of the penalty phase is doing more harm than good. If federal courts cannot dispose of weak claims such as this in a reasonable time, then they should stop doing it at all. If the guilt and death-eligibility determinations are sound, then execution is not a miscarriage of justice. If the state courts have given the penalty phase procedural claims a fair review, a second review of those claims in federal court is not worth the time and resources now being spent.

It is high time to extend the rule of Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976) to all claims having no bearing on the reliability of the determination of guilt or the eligibility for the punishment.