Capital Punishment Conflicting Efforts at Reform in the United States
Capital Punishment in the United States: Conflicting Efforts at Reform
As the number of executions increased in the 1990s, so did dissatisfaction with the system that governed death penalties and executions in the United States. Two major reform efforts emerged. The first was an attempt to hasten executions by cutting off appeals and reducing the gap between state and federal death penalty review processes. For example, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 set firm deadlines by which condemned state prisoners must file appeals in federal court or forfeit their chance to have their case reviewed. The deadlines apply even if the condemned prisoner has no lawyer in the appellate process.
The second major reform effort began amid increased publicity about death row prisoners who had been wrongfully convicted. Since 1973, more than 100 people sentenced to death have been exonerated, some with the aid of DNA testing that became more widespread in the 1990s. There is little doubt that many other innocent defendants remain on death row whose wrongful convictions have not yet been discovered; whether innocent defendants have actually been executed is the subject of passionate debate. Studies of the exonerated defendants’ cases identify a number of factors that led to erroneous convictions, including inadequate legal representation, police and prosecutorial misconduct, false testimony by jailhouse informants, and racial prejudice.
In Illinois, the exoneration of 13 death row inmates – many by private investigations outside of the normal judicial process – led then Governor George Ryan to declare a moratorium on executions in 1999 and appoint a commission of inquiry. In 2003, calling the Illinois death penalty system “haunted by the demon of error,” Ryan pardoned four death row inmates and commuted the death sentences of 167 other prisoners, clearing the state’s death row. Nearly all of the death sentences were commuted to life in prison without parole. The action was the largest commutation of death sentences ever by a U.S. governor. Maryland’s governor has also imposed a moratorium on executions, and many other states with capital punishment have considered legislation to halt executions. In 2007 New Jersey became the first state since 1965 to legally abolish the death penalty.
There is widespread public support for both speeding up executions by cutting off appeals and for making extra efforts to discover the falsely condemned. However, any real effort to close the courts to repetitive appeals and to disallow last-minute litigation makes it more likely that innocent defendants will be executed. Similarly, any real effort to scrutinize cases for wrongful conviction will create long delays, particularly when defendants have not had good lawyers during their trial and initial appeals. Thus, policymakers face a dilemma: solving either of these problems makes the other problem worse. This conflict between speed and reliability is one more example of the basic tug-of-war between efficiency and fairness in the administration of the death penalty. (1)
The Capital Punishment contents in this American legal encyclopedia also includes: Capital Punishment Distribution of Authority, Capital Punishment and the Constitution, Capital Punishment Current Conditions, Capital Punishment Delay, Efficiency and Fairness, Capital Punishment Disparity in Application and Capital Punishment Conflicting Efforts at Reform. For a worldwide overview click here
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