Bipartisan group of senators seek changes in death penalty procedures

June 7, 2000
Web posted at: 2:59 PM EDT (1859 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In another sign that the application of the death penalty is rapidly becoming a hot-button issue this election year, a group of Republican and Democratic senators assembled Wednesday to urge a thorough audit of capital punishment statutes.

Sens. Gordon Smith, Patrick Leahy and Susan Collins

A review of the laws and procedures regulating death sentences and the actual execution process should include full use of evidence obtained through DNA testing revealed during the pretrial and trial phases of a capital case, the senators said.

"Our criminal justice system is not working as it should when innocent people are convicted of serious crimes and then spend decades -- or have even reached the end of death row -- before the mistakes, if ever, are caught," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"It's not working when those in prison for capital and other serious crimes cannot use existing evidence for DNA tests that might have proven their innocence," Leahy told reporters late Wednesday morning.

The Vermont Democrat, flanked by Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wisconsin), Gordon Smith (R-Oregon), and Susan Collins (R-Maine), held the press conference to promote a bill introduced earlier this year in the Senate -- the so-called "Innocence Protection Act -- which seeks to administer DNA testing, where appropriate, in all death penalty cases.

More importantly, the bill seeks to apply DNA test results to capital cases prosecuted before 1994, when such tests were not widely available to legal defense teams, and when their accuracy was often called into question by prosecutors.

"Access to these highly accurate tests helps convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent," Leahy said.

Documentation filed in the Senate with the text of the bill last February cites a Justice Department study that determined more than 65 post-conviction exonerations were realized between 1990 and 1999 based in large part on new DNA tests.

The report said of the two U.S. states that have stringent DNA testing laws on their books -- Illinois and New York -- 14 exonerations were granted by Illinois courts, and seven by courts in New York.

But, Leahy said, DNA statutes will only solve part of capital punishment's wider problems.

"The DNA is the fingerprint of the 21st Century, but DNA tests are only part of the solution," Leahy said. "They are a window into the larger problems in the system, like inadequate counsel."

In an effort to fully address the outstanding systemic issues, the legislation includes provisions to increase federal funds for state and local prosecutors involved in death penalty cases, discretionary appellate and annual review processes, as well as other procedural items intended to ensure defendants involved in capital offenses are granted fair and full access to the courts.

"If you're going to fix a broken system, it's going to require cooperation by the states, by the federal government," Leahy said as he explained the bill should serve as a "catalyst for the reforms that have to happen in the state capitals where most of these criminal cases come from."

The death penalty issue has garnered increased attention in the past months, as polls indicate public support for capital punishment is waning in the wake of increased use of DNA testing and growing concern over whether innocent people are being executed.

The issue most recently came to the forefront when Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the likely Republican nominee for president, granted a 30-day stay of execution for a Texas prisoner so the inmate's lawyers could seek DNA testing.

The move marked the first such reprieve of Bush's tenure as governor. In his more than five years as the Lone Star State's executive, Bush has presided over 131 executions, more than any other state in the nation since the Supreme Court reinstated the procedure in 1976.

"To the extent that DNA can prove for certain innocence or guilt, I think we need to use DNA," the Republican hopeful told reporters last week from the campaign trail.

Bush's recent comments reflect a new sensibility from just a few months ago, when, during a GOP debate, he stated emphatically: "There's no doubt in my mind that each person who has been executed in our state was guilty of the crime committed."

Both Bush and his Democratic rival, Vice President Al Gore, support the death penalty, but the Texas governor's recent shift marks a sea change in the debate, as reflected by the raft of states -- such as Illinois and Virginia -- that have recently suspended executions or ordered thorough reviews of their penal codes after questions of innocence were raised by DNA evidence.

"Four months ago, when we first started talking about the package of death penalty reform, I don't think that too many people thought this would become a front-burner issue this year, or that even we might have legislation this year," Leahy said. "But now hearings are imminent in both the Senate and the House, governors and senators and presidential candidates are being asked about it."

Wednesday, June 7, 2000

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