�       Sempre piu' citta' americane si schierano a favore di una moratoria nelle esecuzioni, da mantenere fino a quando non ci saranno maggiori garanzie nei processi e negli appelli. Lo scrive oggi il 'New York Times'. Il giornale fa l'esempio della Nord Carolina, stato ultraconservatore, dove sette governi comunali si sono espressi in favore della sospensione, l'ultimo dei quali a Charlotte. Ma anche citta' come Filadelfia, Atlanta, Baltimora e San Francisco hanno adottato simili risoluzioni. Queste risoluzioni non hanno forza di legge - gli stati decidono sulla pena capitale - ma secondo il 'Nyt' indicano che un cambiamento d'atteggiamento e' in atto sulla pena di morte, non solo a livello di pubblica opinione, ma anche tra politici ed amministratori. I sondaggi mostrano che, pur restando una maggioranza, gli americani favorevoli alla pena capitale sono al minimo storico degli ultimi 20 anni, attorno al 66%. Questa percentuale scende al 55% quando si offre l'alternativa tra l'esecuzione e il carcere a vita senza sconti di pena. Numerosi studi hanno mostrato che il sistema della pena di morte fa acqua da tutte le parti: razzismo, avvocati incompetenti per i poveri, rigidi limiti alla presentazione di prove, scarso uso dei test del Dna. Finora, solo lo stato dell'Illinois ha attuato una moratoria delle esecuzioni, creando una commissione che studi il problema.

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� THE NEW YORK TIMES � Oct. 31th 2000

Support for a Moratorium in Executions Gets Stronger - By SARA RIMER

HARLOTTE, N.C. � Rod Autrey, a Republican city councilman here, is a supporter of the death penalty in a state where it has long been entrenched. But even in reiterating that support, Mr. Autrey urged the Council in September to approve a resolution favoring a moratorium on executions in North Carolina. The Council adopted the measure, which calls for a two-year halt while steps are taken to ensure that capital punishment is administered justly.  "It's apparent to me that those with little resources are not going to get the same treatment as others," Mr. Autrey said. With a statewide moratorium campaign being waged by clergy, civic leaders, lawyers and citizens' groups, Charlotte became the seventh municipality in North Carolina, and the largest, to pass such a resolution since mid-1999. The latest was Greensboro, where the City Council acted in early October with the support of three members who are death-penalty advocates. The North Carolina cities joined more than two dozen other municipalities, including Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore and San Francisco, that have also adopted moratorium resolutions. None of the measures have the force of law: capital punishment is a matter for the state legislatures, not local governments, and no legislature is actively considering abolishing its death penalty. But the votes reflect an important shift in public attitudes, experts say. A quarter-century after the Supreme Court allowed reinstatement of the death penalty, vast numbers of people, including elected officials, are expressing doubt about how it is administered. Nearly two-thirds of Americans approve of capital punishment, according to polls. But that is the lowest level in 20 years and a significant decline from a high of about 75 percent in 1994. In addition, even the current figure drops further, to about 55 percent, when the polls offer life imprisonment without parole as an alternative. One recent national poll, conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic organizations, showed that when reminded about cases in which death row inmates had ultimately been released on the basis of DNA evidence, 64 percent of Americans favored a temporary halt to executions while steps are taken to ensure that the system works fairly. Statewide polls around the country show similar numbers. Even some of capital punishment's staunchest defenders concede that there is demand for reforms. One prominent death penalty advocate, Paul Cassell, a professor at the University of Utah College of Law, said that "the public is obviously on board for fixing identified problems in identified jurisdictions," though "not on board for a permanent abolition of the death penalty." The re-examination of the system has been prompted by a number of factors, including a decline in homicide rates, the barrage of publicity given death row inmates exonerated through DNA testing, and the execution moratorium declared in January by Gov. George Ryan of Illinois. Governor Ryan, a Republican who supports capital punishment, cited the exoneration of 13 death row inmates since Illinois re-adopted the death penalty in 1977 and said he would permit no more executions until a study of a system he described as "fraught with error" was completed. Moratorium supporters also cite a Columbia University study, issued in June, finding that two of every three appealed death sentences were eventually overturned, mostly because of serious errors by incompetent defense lawyers or the withholding of evidence by overzealous police officers and prosecutors. The reassessment coincides with intense media scrutiny of Gov. George W. Bush's presidential campaign and his support for capital punishment in Texas, which leads the nation in executions. Mr. Bush has remained firm in his position that the system in his state is administered fairly; he has said that no moratorium is needed there and that he would oppose a moratorium on federal executions. Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore, also favors capital punishment. Mr. Gore has chosen not to make a campaign issue of Texas' executing more prisoners than any other state, has voiced no support for moratoriums in states other than Illinois and has said he does not think a federal moratorium is needed "at this time." Though questions about the death penalty previously focused on the morality of state-sanctioned killing, more attention is now being paid to the ability of government to administer the system fairly � without racial, geographic or socioeconomic inequities � and in a way that minimizes the risk of executing anyone innocent. The moratorium movement has both inspired this change and benefited from it. In explaining her support for the Charlotte moratorium resolution, Lynn Wheeler, a Republican city councilwoman who favors the death penalty, said, "When you realize that the governor of Illinois, who's a Republican, called for a moratorium because there were 13 innocent people on death row � well, that raises a question for everyone."  Indeed, Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, is among a number of prominent death penalty supporters who have said they favor a moratorium.  The first call for a moratorium came from the American Bar Association, which in 1997 proposed a temporary halt while states put in place policies to ensure fairness and to minimize the risk of executing the innocent. (The A.B.A. does not have a policy on the death penalty per se.)  But Illinois is the only state to have adopted a moratorium, though others have considered it. Nebraska's Legislature voted for a moratorium in 1999, but the governor vetoed it. The lawmakers there went on to approve financing for a study of the death penalty system, as have the Legislatures in Illinois, Indiana and Maryland. In New Hampshire, where no one is on death row, the Legislature voted last spring to abolish executions, but the governor vetoed the measure. Three decades ago, after a sharp turn against the death penalty in public opinion, the nation engaged in a de facto moratorium, with two executions in 1967, one in 1977 and none in between: in the years leading up to the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw executions, state and federal courts were granting stays or delaying decisions in anticipation of the justices' taking a major death penalty case. The Supreme Court acted in 1972, ruling that capital punishment as applied in the United States was administered arbitrarily and so was cruel and unusual. The ban ended in 1976, when the justices approved newly written statutes in Georgia, Florida and Texas. With the lifting of the ban state by state, Gary Gilmore became the first person executed, in 1977 in Utah, and within a year 35 states had reinstated capital punishment. Rising crime rates accounted for mounting political support for it. The cyclical swings in public backing for the death penalty reflect the intense ambivalence Americans feel toward it, said Anthony Amsterdam, a New York University law professor who for 35 years has been a leading capital defense lawyer and who argued the case before the Supreme Court that led to the ban in 1972. "We can't live with it," Mr. Amsterdam said of capital punishment, "and we can't live without it." The municipal moratorium resolutions are particularly striking in North Carolina, a state that has long been fiercely pro-death penalty. North Carolina sentences about 25 people a year to death � more per capita than most other states, including Texas � and, with 211 condemned prisoners, has the fifth-largest death row in the country. In the past, "there was only one position on the death penalty in North Carolina that mattered, which was that you supported it, period," said James Coleman, a Duke University law professor who has studied the history of the death penalty in the South and was a member of the A.B.A. committee that first called for a moratorium. "There was no room for discussion. That's why I find what is happening now both extraordinary and encouraging." In many parts of North Carolina these days, people are talking about the death penalty at church study groups, city council sessions and town meetings. The Legislature is expected to consider a moratorium bill early next year, and a legislative committee is studying the execution of the mentally retarded and racial inequities in the death penalty system. Most major newspapers in the state have published editorials calling for a moratorium. In September, after a six-month investigation, The Charlotte Observer published a five- part series on the system in both North and South Carolina, describing it as so flawed and filled with inequities that it "risks executing innocent people, while sparing" some of the "most vicious killers." Those who kill whites are far more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill blacks, according to the series, which reported that while whites accounted for 40 percent of murder victims in the Carolinas during the last decade, they were 70 percent of the victims of those now on death row. At least on the municipal level, the politics of the death penalty seem to have changed here. "If you had asked me last year whether there was a chance in the world that the Charlotte City Council would pass a moratorium resolution, I would have said, `Definitely not,' " said Richard Rosen, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who has handled many death penalty appeals. "I thought the vote really was remarkable, because it needed a coalition across ideological boundaries. It illustrated the breadth of the change of public sentiment." Some leading political figures in the state are unconvinced. Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., a Democrat, has said he thinks the state's death penalty system works fairly and so a moratorium is unnecessary. And in Charlotte, the City Council adopted the resolution only over the veto of the mayor, Patrick McCrory, a Republican. "We have protections throughout the system," Mr. McCrory said in an interview. "It makes no sense to have an across- the-board moratorium." "It's an affront to victims," he added. While attracting support from some death penalty advocates, the moratorium movement has also energized opponents of capital punishment. One of those leading the moratorium effort in Charlotte and across the state is James E. Ferguson II, an influential criminal defense lawyer. His firm waged the court battles that desegregated the state in the 1960's and 70's, and he has made the moratorium a priority of his tenure as president of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers. After the moratorium vote here in September, Mr. Ferguson was approached by a jubilant Ted Frazer, whose Catholic church, St. Peter's, had worked hard for the resolution. "He said, `I wonder how this compares to the feeling of the civil rights movement,' " Mr. Ferguson recalled. "I told him, `Ted, this is the civil rights movement.' "