The report is presented in four chapters: (1) Fatal Mistakes: Attorney Misconduct at Trial; (2) Prospects for the Future Are Worse; (3) The Breadth of the Problem; and (4) Towards a Fairer System of Representation. The underlying causes for incompetent lawyering in death penalty cases are the inadequate compensation available for capital representation and the absence of an entity to appoint attorneys independent from the judges who preside over these cases. As long as the system for appointing and compensating counsel is tied to the same politics of recrimination which pushes for more executions, there will be little change. The report concludes that the prospects for improvement in the near future are not good. Executions are already escalating and Congress is about to curtail most federal review of death penalty cases and eliminate all funding for the death penalty resource centers around the country. References