The Philadelphia Inquirer - Nov 12 2001

Death-penalty doubts

Philadelphia voters may have given their "tough cookie" prosecutor, Lynne M. Abraham, another four years to pursue death-penalty cases. But as the district attorney prepares for her new term, there's fresh evidence in her own backyard on the critical need to halt all executions.

It's another case that casts troubling doubts on the fairness of the death penalty - a system that disproportionately condemns minorities and the poor, and sometimes even the innocent. Convicted Philadelphia double-murderer Otis Peterkin has just been granted a new trial by a federal judge whose reasoning retraces familiar ground in capital cases.

U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner cited mistakes by the trial judge, a prosecutor who "overstepped his bounds" in court and prejudiced the jury, and an ill-prepared lawyer who bungled Peterkin's defense by failing to call a potential alibi witness.

In another celebrated death-penalty case, Dennis Counterman - convicted of setting fire to his Allentown home, killing his three children and burning his wife - recently won a new trial after a judge found prosecutors illegally withheld key evidence that might have exonerated him. On death row for a decade-plus, Counterman now hopes a state appellate court will bar his prosecution because he was denied justice so long.

These factors are all too typical in cases where, in nearly 100 instances nationwide, people condemned to death row eventually have been cleared on appeal. The fear that terrible mistakes would result in an innocent person executed led Illinois Gov. George Ryan to his moratorium.

Dwindling public support for the death penalty rests on the presumption that it's administered fairly. But even a hardened prosecutor should have doubts about that by now.