Reuters
July 3, 2001
Justice O'Connor Concerned U.S. May Execute the Innocent
MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) -- Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is worried that innocent people may have been executed in the United States, and said in remarks this week that ''serious questions'' are being raised about the death penalty.
O'Connor cited the cases of 90 death row inmates exonerated since 1973 before their death sentences could be carried out as evidence that innocent people may have been executed.
``If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed,'' she was quoted as telling a group of woman lawyers in Minneapolis on Monday in a report published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
States have put to death more than 700 prisoners in the past 25 years. The federal government resumed executions on June 11 after a 38-year hiatus with the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh . A week later, murderous drug lord Juan Raul Garza was executed at the same federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
``Serious questions are being raised about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered in this country,'' O'Connor said.
``Perhaps it's time to look at minimum standards for appointed counsel in death cases and adequate compensation for appointed counsel when they are used,'' she said.
She decried the gap in legal defense available to those with adequate resources and those without.
O'Connor said statistics showed that in Texas, which leads the nation in executions, defendants with appointed counsel were 28 percent more likely to be convicted than those retaining their own attorneys; if convicted, they were 44 percent more likely to receive a death sentence.
Like O'Connor, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has also criticized of the nation's death penalty system.
Viewed as a moderate on the high court, O'Connor, 71, was nominated in 1981 and became the first woman justice.
She said she was troubled by high contingency fees many lawyers charge in civil cases and lamented what she called ``the over-legalization of everyday life.''
``As one ages, as I am doing, one begins to look back,'' she said. She commended advances by women and minorities in legal circles and said more women lawyers and judges may provide a dose of common sense into the legal system.
Copyright © 2001. Reuters . All rights reserved.
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