TWO-THIRDS OF DEATH SENTENCES FLAWED
A major study has been released which dem-onstrates the flaws in America's capital jurisprudence. Every appealed death-penalty conviction from 1973 to 1995 was reviewed by a team of lawyers and criminologists led by Columbia University law professor James Liebman, examining 4,578 state cases. They found that appeals courts had determined that 68% of the cases had prejudicial errors and should be reversed. Of these, 37% were reversed because of serious errors by defense attorneys, and 19% were reversed because of misconduct by police officers and prosecutors. When retried, 7% of defendants were found not guilty, and 75%, though convicted, did not again receive the death penalty. Only 18% were sentenced again to death.
The most common errors were by egregiously incompetent defense lawyers who missed evidence that would have saved the defendant, and by police and prosecutors who suppressed evidence that would have helped the defendant. "Our 23 years' worth of results reveal a death penalty system collapsing under the weight of its own mistakes," the Columbia team concluded. The existing system is "persistently and systematically fraught with error."
The full report, entitled "A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995," is at <http://the justiceproject.org>. The study was commissioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee; research began in 1991. Although the report's purpose was not to find evidence that an innocent person has been executed, Liebman's findings certainly add weight to claims that many innocent or less-culpable prisoners have not survived death row. The Chicago Tribune's series on June 11 and 12 similarly received wide publicity and detailed potentially fatal flaws in the Texas capital-punishment system. In addition, more and more conservative opinion leaders are now endorsing a moratorium, if not abolition; among these are the Washington Times, the Cato Institute, the Rutherford Institute, George Will, and Pat Robertson.
Death Row Updates
Gary Graham was executed in Texas on June 22. Graham's case turned into a major media event. It was an obvious test of George W. Bush's declaration earlier this year that none of the more than 135 prisoners whose executions he has approved was innocent. Graham, who on death row was known as Shaka Sankofa, was convicted solely on the testimony of just one eyewitness whose identification of Graham was manipulated by police. Observers said that no other execution under modern law has taken place with such weak evidence. Alibi witnesses for Graham were never heard in court. His attorney, Ronald Mock, was renowned for incompetence. He assumed Graham's guilt, failed to interview witnesses, mounted almost no defense, and after several state-bar disciplinary proceedings, no longer defends capital cases. No physical evidence linked Graham to the shooting, and the gun he was arrested with was ruled out as the murder weapon. Graham, a robber and rapist, was 17 at the time of the crime, and thus the execution also violates international law banning execution of juveniles. Of the half-dozen countries to have executed juveniles in the past decade, two--Pakistan and Yemen--have now banned the practice, while the US has killed the majority. As usual, the state pardons board, whose independence of the governor is purely theoretical, ruled against the condemned. . . .
Florida Governor Jeb Bush, George W.'s brother, refused to halt the execution of Thomas Provensano on June 21. . . . Provenzano was so completely insane that he believed he was to be executed because he was Jesus. Last December, a state judge ruled that Provenzano met Florida's dismal standard of execution competence. Under any other standard, Provenzano could not have been put to death.
--from Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Summer Newsletter 2000, <www.scn.org/activism/wcadp>