MONTGOMERY, Alabama - Attorney General Luther Strange is seeking to accelerate the pace of death penalty appeals in Alabama, noting decades can go by before inmates see the execution chamber.

Strange said a bill to streamline the death penalty appeals process will be a top priority for him in the upcoming legislative session.

“It shouldn’t take decades through the appeals process to get justice for families,” Strange said in an interview.

The attorney general said death penalty appeals in Alabama currently “seem endless with excessive delays that serve only to prolong pain and postpone justice for the victims of these heinous crimes.”

Flanked by prosecutors and law enforcement officers, Strange announced his legislative agenda today in a series of press conferences around the state.

He is also backing proposals that would make it a capital offense to kill someone at a school or day care and also to give state law enforcement the power to do wiretaps during murder, drug and other certain investigations.

Currently, a person given the death penalty has a series of direct appeals, first to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, and then to the Alabama Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. After those are complete, the defendant can begin Rule 32 appeals, post-conviction appeals that look at other issues such as the trial lawyer's competence.

The proposed legislation, dubbed The Fair Justice Act, would run both sets of appeals simultaneously. Capital defendants would be required to file Rule 32 petitions within 180 days of filing their first direct appeal.

Strange said the proposal is similar to what Texas

The average stay on the state’s death row has been nearly 16 years since the U.S reinstated the death penalty. However, the time between sentencing and execution is expected to increase since the inmates currently on death row have already been there an average of 13 years.

The longest-serving death row inmate in Alabama has been there for 34 years. Arthur Lee Giles was sentenced to death in 1979 when he was 19 years old.

The legislation is backed by district attorneys across the state.

Montgomery County District Attorney Ellen Brooks said the sentence has still not been carried out in a death penalty case she took to trial 25 years ago. Brooks said the defendant killed his girlfriend and her mother, chasing them through their home, after becoming upset over her plans to leave him to go to college.

“Truly, one of the most evil people I have ever seen,” Brooks said.

Strange said the expedited process would not infringe on defendants’ rights.

“You get the same level of appeals, but you do them on a dual track,” Strange said.

But the proposal is expected to draw opposition from death penalty opponents and others who say it will get swifter executions, but less justice.

Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, said defendants don't know what Rule 32 issues they have – such as adequacy of counsel or prosecutor failure to turn over exculpatory materials -- until much later

He said Rule 32 issues are usually identified later by an in independent review of someone looking at the trial work.

Stevenson said it was hard to react to the legislation without seeing a copy, but he said there have been problems in the states that have experimented with streamlined appeals.

Stevenson said there are already significant problems with Alabama's death penalty process, such as lack of counsel for death row inmates and Alabama's status as one of only three states that allow a judge to override a jury's sentencing recommendation for life to impose a death sentence.

He said politicians often talk about assuring the death penalty is more swift, but not about the reliability of convictions and the fairness of sentences.

The attorney general is also seeking legislation:

- To allow state law enforcement the ability to do wire taps for investigations into murder, kidnapping, child pornography, human trafficking, sex offenses involving children under 12, and felony drug offenses.

Strange said Alabama is one of only seven states where state law enforcement can not conduct wire taps. However, local law enforcement would not have the unfettered ability to conduct eavesdropping. The requests would have to be go through the attorney general’s office and then granted by a judge for a 30-day period.

“This is a very narrowly drawn bill,” Strange said.

The bill would not allow state wire taps in public corruption investigations.

"The broader you make it, the more controversial it becomes," Strange said.

- To include murders at a school or day care in the list of crimes that can be prosecuted as a capital offenses.

- To let prosecutors grant immunity and compel testimony from witnesses. Alabama is the only state that allows the witness to decline immunity and thus to withhold testimony, according to the attorney general’s office.

The 2014 legislative session begins as Strange is seeking a second term as attorney general. The session begins Jan. 14.

"We are proposing fair and sensible changes to make the system work better for everyone. We also send a clear message that we will not tolerate the slaughter of our children at schools, with changes in the law that specify it is a capital crime to murder them and others who are particularly vulnerable," Strange said.