The Justice Department is putting the final touches on regulations that could give any Attorney General important new sway over death penalty cases in various states, including the power to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts.

The rules implement a little-noticed provision in last year’s reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the attorney general the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases. The authority has been held by federal judges.

Under the rules now being prepared, if a state requested it and if the Attorney General agreed, prosecutors could use "fast track" procedures that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court.

The move to shorten the appeals process and effectively speed up executions comes at a time of growing national concern about the fairness of the death penalty, underscored by the use of DNA testing to establish the innocence of more than a dozen death row inmates in recent years.

Amid the public debate, the number of people executed in the U.S. has declined steadily since the mid-1990s.

And, o f course, there is the political side as this move gives the Democrats another reason to critize Atty. General Gonzales and blame the execution of innocents on President Buish. Then there are the bleeding hearts that say the way the states administer a three-drug lethal cocktail unnecessarily risks excessive pain for the inmate and therefore violates the constitutional bar against cruel and unusual punishment. Of course, nobody seems to care about the excessive pain the convict inflicted on his or her victim.

Prosecutors say many death penalty cases take far too long to resolve even when the issue of guilt is clear. Especially in the West, where the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has blocked many executions, cases can take decades to wind through the courts. In its most recent term, the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in three cases in which the 9th Circuit had reversed the sentence.

One of the cases involved a two-time Arizona murderer who told the sentencing judge: "If you want to give me the death penalty, just bring it right on." He was sentenced in 1990.

Some Arizona officials say the new procedures are long overdue. "If you are going to have the death penalty at all, it shouldn’t take 20 to 25 years," said Kent Cattani, the chief capital litigation counsel in the Arizona attorney general’s office. "Either get rid of it altogether, or try to have a good system in state courts and then accelerate it through the federal courts."

It would also impose strict guidelines on federal judges for deciding such inmates’ petitions. Federal district judges would have 450 days, appeals courts 120 days. Proponents say that would prevent foot-dragging by liberal judges.