| |
Detail
of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and
Nicola Sacco from the cartoon of a mural by Ben Shahn © Estate of Ben
Shahn /Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
|
NYTimes editorial
February 23, 2002
The
Death Penalty Re-examined
America's death
penalty system is badly broken. Just how broken was underscored two
years ago when a study of capital appeals by a team at Columbia University
unearthed the fact that fully 68 percent of all death sentences reviewed
by appellate courts between 1973 and 1995 were reversed because of serious
error.
A new follow-up study by the same researchers finds that states and
counties that make most use of the death penalty ˜ applying it to a
wide range of crimes instead of reserving it for "the worst of
the worst" ˜ are also the most prone to flawed verdicts. When it
comes to the death penalty, as Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat,
has observed, practice does not make perfect.
These latest findings
have landed at a moment of considerable churning over the death penalty.
While the majority of the public still backs it, support is no longer
overwhelming. On Wednesday the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case
it could use to reverse its disgraceful 1989 decision allowing the execution
of retarded people. A capital case on next term's docket will revisit
the vexing issue of racial discrimination in jury selection.
On Capitol Hill,
meanwhile, promising legislation is pending in both chambers that would
reduce the risk of executing innocent people. In the past year many
states have enacted death penalty reforms. You do not have to oppose
the death penalty to support laws making it fairer.
The Columbia studies
show that, far from mere "technicalities," the errors most
often leading to reversal were incompetent legal counsel, suppression
of evidence by police or prosecutors, and improper jury instructions
by judges. Realistically, state and federal appeals judges cannot be
relied upon to catch all the mistakes, especially given the limited
availability of experienced volunteer lawyers to handle capital appeals,
and stringent rules for reversing a death verdict that permit egregious
errors to slip through.
The proposed legislation
would establish national standards for the representation of capital
defendants, and provide the resources to meet them ˜ a step Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor appeared to endorse in recent comments. The measure
˜ the bipartisan Innocence Protection Act ˜ would also require preservation
of biological evidence that may later prove crucial on appeal, and ensure
federal and state death row inmates access to DNA testing if that could
help exonerate them.
The House version,
sponsored by Ray LaHood, a Republican, and Bill Delahunt, a Democrat,
has 218 co-sponsors. That number, about half the House, reflects the
growing unease across the country ˜ and across party lines ˜ about perpetuating
a death-penalty system prone to unfairness and mistakes. Armed with
the devastating findings of the Columbia researchers, the measure's
backers need to press on.
|
