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so that they, too, would be qualified to accept assignments in capital cases; to provide a resource center to assist in all such defenses; and to assist in the education of those judges throughout the state who would be designated to hear the cases.
    One of the points of contention during the debate that restored the death penalty involved the issue of just when in the accusatory process a person charged with capital murder should be provided counsel. Prosecutors argued that the traditional method of assigning a lawyer at the first court appearance was adequate; defense attorneys contended that the early stages of the process were often the most critical, and that the accused should be provided counsel at the earliest possible opportunity. After a good degree of haggling in the legislature, a compromise of sorts was hammered out: The district attorney in whose county the charges are being brought has an affirmative obligation to notify the Capital Defender as soon as he authorizes the filing of first-degree murder charges, so that the Capital Defender, acting as a clearing house of sorts, can designate either a member of his staff, or an outside qualified attorney, to immediately begin representing the accused.
    The person appointed as New York’s first Capital Defender is a man named Kevin Doyle. Doyle is lean, youthful looking, and clear-eyed. He is bright, well spoken, and absolutely indefatigable. He is no stranger to the arena, having spent most of his career representing death-row inmates in Alabama, where the state pays $10 an hour - ditchdiggers’ rates - to those lawyers willing to devote their lives to the business of trying to save defendants from the electric chair.
    As one of Doyle’s first official acts, he sent a letter, by certified mail, to the district attorneys of each of the sixty-two counties in the state, informing them of their statutory obligation to notify him the moment they had authorized the filing of capital charges. The letter included emergency pager numbers, whereby Doyle or a member of his staff could be reached at any time, day or night, no matter where they were, or what the circumstance.
    There is some doubt as to whether Gil Cavanaugh (who had personally been one of the sixty-two recipients of Doyle’s letter) neglected through oversight to comply with the notification requirement, or deliberately chose to ignore it. But his version, that he was unaware of the case until Monday afternoon, is simply belied by the facts. In any event, he never notified Doyle’s office.
    It wasn’t until late Monday afternoon, a full twenty-four hours after the time of Stanton’s log entry regarding his conversation with Cavanaugh, that Doyle, visiting friends on the south shore of Long Island, received a call from a member of his staff, informing him that the networks were airing reports of a double murder in some place called Flat Lake. Mumbling apologies to his hosts, Doyle rushed out to his car, grabbed a handful of road maps, and tore through them until he found the town. Back inside, he spent the next hour on the phone trying to identify and track down the Ottawa County District Attorney. He finally reached Gil Cavanaugh at the clubhouse of the Green Tree Country Club, outside of Cedar Falls.
    Doyle got right to the point. “I’m told your office has authorized the filing of a complaint in what could be a capital murder case,” he said.
    “That’s right,” Cavanaugh acknowledged. “Just found out about it myself.”
    “When?” Doyle pressed him.
    “When what?”
    “When did you find out about it?”
    “Just now, just now,” Cavanaugh said. “About, ah, a little while ago, more or less.”
    UP AND RUNNING for less than two years at the time, the Capital Defender’s Office occupied temporary space in lower Manhattan, and had a single branch office, in Rochester. Back at the road map, Doyle estimated that Flat Lake completed a rough equilateral triangle with the two locations, and was