[Dialogue] Lawyer Group Wants Executions Frozen

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Monday, October 29, 2007 by The
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/>  Chicago Tribune 

Lawyer Group Wants Executions Frozen
A three-year study finds unfairness and glitches, the American Bar Assn.
says in calling for a national moratorium.

by Maurice Possley

CHICAGO - The American Bar Assn., concluding a three-year study of capital
punishment systems, found so many inequities and shortfalls that it is
calling for a national freeze on executions.
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In a report to be released today, the organization, which has more than
400,000 members, said that death penalty systems in Indiana, Georgia, Ohio,
Alabama and Tennessee had so many problems that those states should
immediately halt executions for further study.

They were among eight states examined by the association that provided the
basis for its call to stop executions nationwide.

"After carefully studying the way states across the spectrum handle
executions, it has become crystal clear that the process is deeply flawed,"
said Stephen Hanlon, chairman of the ABA's Death Penalty Moratorium
Implementation Project.

The study also focused on death penalty systems in Arizona, Florida and
Pennsylvania, but it did not find their conditions as serious. The group
says it does not take a position for or against the death penalty.

The study found "significant racial disparities" in the imposition of the
death penalty, inadequate indigent defense programs, failures in crime
laboratories, and a lack of uniformity in implementing nationally recognized
best practices in eyewitness identification procedures as well as the
recording of interrogations of suspects.

"The death penalty system is rife with irregularity - supporting the need
for a moratorium until states can ensure fairness and accuracy," Hanlon
said.

Prosecutors and supporters of death penalty have said the eight-state study
was flawed because the ABA teams mainly consisted of opponents of capital
punishment.

Joshua Marquis, district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., and a vice
president of the National District Attorneys Assn., said: "I think the ABA
should drop its pretense of being neutral on the death penalty. . . . They
are being disingenuous by simply declaring that they want a moratorium. The
powers that be in the ABA want the death penalty abolished."

Marquis, who supports the death penalty, said: "There is no doubt that you
could always improve on the system. . . . There were innocent people on
death row. There's no doubt about it. But this idea that the ABA is
promoting - that the system is riddled with errors - is just plain wrong."

In 2000, then-Gov. George H. Ryan of Illinois imposed a moratorium on
execution, citing the release of several defendants from death row and
newspaper reports about problems in the state's death penalty system.

Three years later, the Republican emptied death row, commuting the death
sentences of 156 prisoners to life terms, after the Legislature took no
action on recommendations for the system. Some of those measures, including
videotaping of interrogations in murder cases, have since been passed.

But some states, the ABA study said, have not required prosecutors' offices
to establish policies on the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, or to
evaluate cases based on evidence that is less reliable, such as testimony by
jailhouse informants or eyewitness identification.

"Most states have cases in which courts have found serious misconduct by
prosecutors in capital cases, yet the prosecutors are not disciplined by the
state disciplinary organization," according to the report.

Most states "do not require preservation of the evidence - particularly DNA
evidence - through the entire legal process until the accused is either
released from prison or executed," the report said.

Further, the report said, many states fail to provide a statewide indigent
capital defense system, and where attorneys are appointed to defend capital
cases, the compensation "is often woefully inadequate, dipping to well under
$50 per hour in some cases."

"When a life is at stake, there is no room for error or injustice," the
report said. "Ultimately, serious problems were found in every state death
penalty system."

The ABA did not study lethal injection procedures, which will be reviewed by
the Supreme Court next year.

This report includes information from the Associated Press.

C 2007 The Chicago Tribune

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/29/4886/

 

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