Washington Post Editorial
July 3, 2001
A Real Crime Bill
The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings last week on the Innocence Protection Act, a death penalty reform bill on which capital punishment's opponents and supporters alike should be able to agree. The bill's bipartisan support -- its chief Senate sponsors are Democrat Patrick Leahy and Republicans Gordon Smith and Susan Collins -- combined with the Democratic takeover of the Senate means that it has a reasonable chance of passing this term. Its prospects in the House, where it has more than 200 cosponsors, also seem strong. After years of crime bills that served chiefly to let members of Congress strut their toughness, this is one that could actually free innocent people and keep other innocents out of jail.
The bill would, as a first step, help to ensure that inmates have access to biological evidence for DNA testing. It would do this directly for federal prisoners; for states, it would condition the award of federal grants for DNA programs on adoption of reasonable procedures to permit testing. The bill would also forbid states from blocking efforts by death row inmates to perform DNA tests that could verify or refute a claim of innocence. These provisions should greatly aid wrongly convicted prisoners in cases where physical evidence remains.
The bill also would begin to address the horrid quality of lawyering in capital cases around the country. It would set up a national commission to define minimum standards for capital representation, and it would offer states money to help bring their defense systems up to those standards. For states that fail to live up to the standards, the bill would reduce the deference that federal courts are required to show to state court proceedings when reviewing death penalty cases -- meaning that the accused would either have competent counsel or more serious federal review.
Unfortunately, the effort to improve the quality of counsel in capital cases seems to be the most controversial portion of the bill. At the committee hearing, Sen. Orrin Hatch argued that it would "create a one-size-fits-all national standard for capital case attorneys" that would prove "harmful to the efficient administration of justice." He suggested the committee focus instead on areas -- such as DNA -- where there is "substantial agreement." But bad defense lawyers are probably the chief cause of wrongful convictions. Correcting this problem must be a goal of any bill intended to protect the innocent.
Copyright © 2001, Washington Post. All rights reserved.
saved from url: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/A10778-2001Jul2.html
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
