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US Trial System “Seriously flawed” |
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June 13, 2000
WASHINGTON, JUNE 12 (AP) - Two-thirds of death penalty cases in the United States that were appealed from 1973 through 1995 were successful, report researchers who contend the nation's capital punishment system is "collapsing under the weight of its own mistakes."
A study of 4,578 appeals during those years showed that most cases "are so seriously flawed that they have to be done over again," said Columbia University law professor James Liebman, the lead author.
"It's not one case, it's thousands of cases. It's not one state, it's almost all of the states," Liebman said in an interview.
"You're creating a very high risk that some errors are going to get through the process."
The study comes at a time of increased debate over capital punishment.
Earlier this year, Republican Gov. George Ryan of Illinois imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in his state after 13 death row inmates were exonerated. Texas Gov. George W. Bush recently approved his first 30-day reprieve in a death penalty case - to allow time for DNA testing - after permitting 131 executions.
But public support for capital punishment remains high in the United States. A Gallup Poll in February showed 66 percent of back the use of death sentences, down somewhat from Gallup polls during the 1990s that showed support ranging from 71 percent to 80 percent.
The Columbia study said only 5 percent of the 5,760 death sentences imposed from 1973 through 1995 were carried out.
The study, written with professor Jeffrey Fagan and graduate student Valerie Wesate appears to have come down some since 1995. A second study to be released later this year is expected to look at those numbers, as well as the reasons why death penalty convictions are thrown out.
The main reasons appear to be incompetent defense lawyering and misconduct by prosecutors, the Columbia study said.
Capital punishment resumed in 1977 after a Supreme Court-imposed moratorium, and 313 people were executed by the end of 1995. In recent years, the Supreme Court and Congress have acted to speed up death penalty reviews in federal courts, and there have been 642 executions to date.
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