Cal. State Bar President Howard Miller proposes a new unit of measurement: the Jarndyce.  If you have read Charles Dickens' Bleak House, you don't need to be told what quantity this measure is for: legal waste and delay.

Miller's piece is about civil litigation, but it could just as easily be about review of capital cases. Why do we need 20 years of litigation to review a judgment in a case where there is no doubt whatever that the defendant is indeed the perpetrator? We don't.