Though court watchers argued that the two rulings did not indicate a shift by the court away from support of capital punishment laws, death-penalty opponents were emboldened by the rulings. Defense lawyers already are sorting out what the decisions mean for clients on death row. Chris Adams, death-penalty-resource counsel for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, defends death-row inmates in Georgia and Alabama. He spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Debra Rosenberg about the Supreme Court decisions. Excerpts:

Newsweek: Have you talked with death-row inmates about the decisions?

Chris Adams: We were the first people to bring news down about the Ring decision. We told them, “Feel free to tell people about it, but we don’t know what it means yet.”… They’d be a lot more excited if it applies to them. We’re all a little bit in limbo.

So what does Ring mean for inmates now on death row?

It means a ton for the inmates in the five states where it’s just judicial sentencing [Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Nebraska]. In Alabama, Florida, Delaware and Indiana [where juries give judges advisory verdicts], it’s unclear. Certainly there’s going to be a lot of litigation to find out what it means. I suspect courts will be all over the board on that … We hope that it might mean that the folks in Alabama [death row] due to judicial override are going to get to come off death row. I don’t know if that means they’ll get a life sentence or a resentencing. We know there will be nothing easy about it. It will be a fight every step of the way.

How will states handle the decision?

I suspect the courts and the legislatures will both try to figure out what to do. In Arizona, someone was talking about calling a special legislative session. There was also talk about changing the law in Montana–they did that last term in case Ring went against them. Folks are trying to read tea leaves to see how much incremental change they have to make to make themselves constitutional. It would be easy if they just said they were going to take the judges out of it and remand everyone for a new sentencing trial. Things are not usually that easy when the politics of the death penalty are involved … and it is an election year.

Taken together, what do the two decisions mean for the death penalty?

It’s absolutely wonderful that the two decisions came down within a week of each other. There are a lot of people on death row and their families and lawyers who are thrilled by this. But I don’t think it represents a sea change with the court. There were earlier decisions that were not so positive. [In one earlier case, the justices said a lawyer did not have to argue mitigating circumstances that might have spared his client from death.] … He didn’t even get up and argue for his client’s life, and the court said that was fine. With that in mind, and with the folks who are on the current court in mind, I don’t think it represents a complete change. These two decisions were anticipated, they were legally correct, there was precedent for them. As much as I would love to think it stands for something large and a crisis of conscience among a few members of the court, I don’t think so.

How do the rulings relate to new public concerns about the death penalty? Two states have now put a hold on executions.

As much as I would love for this country to be in a position to say we should abolish the death penalty, we are not there yet. It does feed into a wider public debate on the death penalty. A guy in Georgia had a two-day trial, his sentencing hearing was 21 minutes long … the lawyer had never heard of two big Supreme Court cases. We kill some of these guys, and we don’t kill others. The more the public hears about these things, it’s awfully hard to say the system works.

Who will make the next big move, the courts or lawmakers?

My hope is that we will see it from areas other than the court. For most of the history in this country, the court has been the follower of public opinion rather than being at the front of any issue. We’ll see change in some state legislatures. With the current composition of the Supreme Court, we won’t see change until we see it on another level. Now we even hear about people running for political office who are against the death penalty … It’s unheard of.