> law professor James Liebman. He examined the 4,478 capital cases> adjudicated in American courts between 1973 and 1995, and found
> that:
>
> 7% of those sentenced to death were proven innocent upon appeal.
>
> 68% of the cases were found to have "serious" and "reversible"
> errors including "egregiously incompetent defense lawyers who
> didn't even look for -- and demonstrably missed -- important
> evidence that the defendant was innocent or did not deserve to
> die" and "police or prosecutors who did discover that kind of
> evidence but suppressed it."
>
> State appeals courts often overlook the judicial errors. While
> state courts overturned 47% of the death sentences due to
> "serious flaws," "later federal review found `serious error' --
> error undermining the reliability of the outcome -- in 40% of
> the remaining sentences."
>
> Some will say, yes!, death sentences are being overturned on
> appeal, justice is triumphant, the system corrects itself. But
> what the Liebman study also found was that it takes, on average,
> nine years from sentencing to the last judicial review and
> execution. (In recent years, the length of time has risen to
> 10.6 years). In human terms, this means that thousands of people
> sentenced to death are wasting away on death-row waiting for the
> appeal cycle to finish. To be sure, most of the convicts on
> death-row are guilty of something, even if not the crime for
> which they can be legally executed. But seven percent of them
> are innocent of everything. They were unjustly arrested,
> unfairly convicted, and have lost years of their lives. By
> unjust legal action, the state separated them from their
> children, their families, their loved ones, their careers, and
> their freedom to have fun -- and came close to killing them.
> Meanwhile, the guilty parties, the killers who committed the
> crimes that they were charged with, are still on the loose.
>
> George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, New Hampshire's Governor
> Jeanne Shaheen, a majority of the current Supreme Court
> Justices, and a majority of the legislators in a majority of the
> states all support the death penalty. George W. Bush and his
> brother, Jeb, Governor of Florida, lead the way in capital
> punishment. George W. Bush, our current "Lord High Executioner,"
> has gone so far as to lower state subsidies for defense appeals.
> Under Bush's rule, Texas inmates are not getting fair trials or
> decent counsel. A study by the Chicago Tribune of 138 Texas
> death sentences found that 29 cases involved a psychiatrist,
> testifying for the prosecution, whose testimony has been
> condemned by the American Psychiatric Association as "unethical
> and untrustworthy"; 43 cases included defense attorneys publicly
> sanctioned for misconduct; and 23 capital cases included
> jailhouse informants testifying for the prosection. Yet,
> according to a story in the Ft. Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram
> (6/12/00) the "Texas error rate" in capital cases, is "below
> average." God protect the innocent from the compassionate
> conservativism of Texas justice. God protect the innocent from
> the justice system of the United States.
>
> The movement against the death penalty will grow stronger with
> these findings. After journalism students at Northwestern
> University uncovered evidence that proved the innocence of one
> death-row inmate, Illinois Governor George Ryan, a Republican,
> courageously suspended the death sentence. Upon further
> investigation, Ryan found 13 additional cases in which convicts
> on death-row were cleared of the crimes under which they had
> been sentenced. Alas, not all Governors are that brave -- or
> just. Democratic Governor Jeanne Shaheen recently rejected a
> proposal by the New Hampshire legislature to suspend the New
> Hampshire death sentence.
>
> In Congress, Vermont's Senator Patrick Leahy, a former
> prosecutor, has introduced the Innocence Protection Act that
> would give convicted inmates the right to DNA testing. DNA is a
> cellular fluid that carries an individual's genetic code. In
> cases where blood or semen is taken as evidence, DNA can
> determine a person's guilt or innocence. Republicans, led by
> Nevada's Senator Orrin Hatch, are trying to weaken the bill.
>
> Leahy's bill, a step in the right direction, still doesn't
> assure death-row prisoners adequate legal counsel.
>
> Whether the Liebman study will lead to the abolition of the
> death penalty remains to be seen. Advocates of the death penalty
> have never been impressed with rational arguments. But there is
> hope. Al Gore, always sensitive to public opinion, avows that
> the Liebman study might lead him to reconsider his support of
> capital punishment. (First of all, I'm sure, he'll take a poll).
>
> Support for the death sentence is rife with hypocrisy. Some of
> its most ardent supporters, for example, want to elevate the Ten
> Commandments to American law. There's even an Alabama judge,
> recently elected, who wants to post them in all public places
> including his court room. The Commandments state, "Thou Shalt
> Not Kill." How people who profess religion can support the
> death penalty and still call themselves religious boggles the
> mind.
>
> The death penalty has always been race and class-based. Wealthy
> white murderers rarely have to enter the executioner's chamber.
> Capital punishment ought to be abolished. It's unnecessary and
> immoral, and it violates basic legal principles of fairness and
> justice.
>
>
> (Marty Jezer is a free-lance writer from Brattleboro, Vermont. He
> welcomes comments at mjez@sover.net)
>
>
> ---------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
> Bangor Daily News Editorial
> Wednesday, June 2000
>
> Death and Texas
>
> When the Supreme Court invalidated death penalty laws in 1972,
> Justice Potter Stewart wrote that the administration of the
> ultimate punishment was so inconsistent and capricious that the
> chances of receiving it were like being hit by lightning. The
> next year, the court began upholding revised laws that addressed
> those objections.
>
> More than a quarter-century later, 640 executions later, the
> death penalty is again under attack. The old issue of arbitrary
> application is back, joined now by new concerns that innocent
> defendants are being railroaded by sloppy defense attorneys,
> overzealous police and prosecutors and politically driven judges.
>
> A new Columbia University study of the death penalty, the most
> comprehensive ever, looked at the 4,578 death sentences handed
> down between 1973 and 1995. It found that error at trial caused
> 68 percent of those sentences to be overturned on appeal. Upon
> retrial, 82 percent of those defendants received lesser
> sentences and 7 percent were acquitted.
>
> In other words, when the question is who deserves death and who
> is guilty, the answer coming out the courts is overwhelmingly
> wrong. Death penalty advocates point to this reversal rate as
> evidence that the appeals process works. This ignores the
> obvious need for an overhaul of the courts, it assumes that all
> errors are caught during appeals and comes at a time when
> Congress and state legislatures are in a mad rush to curtail the
> appeals process, the one part of the system that, more or less,
> seems to work.
>
> The situation was so bad in Illinois that three months ago Gov.
> George Ryan ordered a moratorium on executions. Here's how bad: 13
> men on death row had been cleared found absolutely innocent by
> new evidence. In the case that proved the final straw for that
> Republican governor, a man just 48 hours away from lethal
> injection was proved innocent not by a properly functioning
> appeals process but by evidence uncovered by Northwestern
> University journalism students.
>
> But the focus of attention now is Texas, in part because its
> governor is running for president, but mostly because Texas is
> the most execution-happy of states - 218 since it reinstated the
> death penalty in 1982, 131 since George W. Bush became governor
> in 1995.
>
> Gov. Bush has long defended his state's death-penalty record,
> portraying its criminal justice system as a finely tuned machine
> that never fails. That makes his recent decision to allow a
> review of DNA evidence in a rape/murder case, the first time he
> has stepped in, a welcome admission that sometimes even finely
> tuned machines need checkups.
>
> Now Gov. Bush must take the next step and order an overhaul.
> One death-row inmate has been denied a review because the state
> contends that the mere fact his court-appointed attorney slept
> through much of his trial does not necessarily mean he was
> inadequately represented. Another is scheduled to die next week,
> despite clear and mounting evidence that his identification by a
> lone eyewitness was rigged. At least nine men - Hispanics and
> blacks - ended up on death row after a psychologist engaged as an
> expert witness by the state told juries those particular
> defendants were likely to remain threats to society because of
> their race. Justice Potter's lightning analogy remains true.
> In Texas it appears certain individuals are being sent out into
> the thunderstorm with lightning rods.
>
> The present debate on the death penalty is not about whether
> execution is justice, it's about whether justice is being
> executed. It remains true, as death penalty advocates assert,
> that an executed killer will never kill again. It also remains
> true that an innocent person executed remains forever innocent.
>
>
>
