  Motivated by recent results on charmed baryons from CLEO and FOCUS, we
reexamine the couplings of the orbitally excited charmed baryons. Due to its
proximity to the [Sigma_c pi] threshold, the strong decays of the
Lambda_c(2593) are sensitive to finite width effects. This distorts the shape
of the invariant mass spectrum in Lambda_{c1}-> Lambda_c pi^+pi^- from a simple
Breit-Wigner resonance, which has implications for the experimental extraction
of the Lambda_c(2593) mass and couplings. We perform a fit to unpublished CLEO
data which gives M(Lambda_c(2593)) - M(Lambda_c) = 305.6 +- 0.3 MeV and h2^2 =
0.24^{+0.23}_{-0.11}, with h2 the Lambda_{c1}-> Sigma_c pi strong coupling in
the chiral Lagrangian. We also comment on the new orbitally excited states
recently observed by CLEO.

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;High Energy Physics - Experiment