The Atlanta Journal Constitution

5/5/02

Innocents lost in states using death penalty

 You don't have to take an excursion back through decades of history to find evidence of lynchings. Just spend some time, instead, in a serious review of death penalty cases around the country since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment.

Pay particular attention to the South. A scholarly examination is bound to yield solid evidence that states have executed the innocent.

 Perhaps that's the reason that no states have followed Illinois' lead and halted executions while laws and procedures are reviewed. Politicians -- governors, state legislators, prosecutors -- don't dare look too closely. They are afraid of what they might see.

 Around the country, about 100 wrongfully convicted men and women have been freed from death row since 1976. They are not among the thousands of death row inmates who have been released on legal technicalities, given new trials or been granted the lesser sentence of life in prison. This group of 100 men and women were later exonerated.

 Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a man of both conscience and courage, suspended the death penalty in January 2000 after an innocent Illinois inmate came within two days of death. Anthony Porter was within 48 hours of his scheduled execution when he was granted a temporary stay; a few months later, journalism students working with a private investigator obtained a confession from the real murderer.

 That was too close for Ryan -- much too close. And there were others -- twelve other wrongfully convicted death row inmates released from Illinois prisons in the past 26 years. Ryan shut down his death chambers and commissioned a task force to issue recommendations that will trim the chances, if not eliminate the potential entirely, of an innocent man or woman ever again being threatened with execution at the hands of the state of Illinois. The task force issued a series of worthy recommendations last month.

 But, with 37 states and the federal government still practicing state-sanctioned executions, only a handful even concede their methods may need examination. None of the others has placed moratoriums on executions, as Illinois did.

 And those states most notorious for a headlong rush to justice have refused any such study. Politicians proceed with their eyes wide shut, keeping the death chambers cranked up.

 Given the opportunity to display even a hint of doubt about the Texas death penalty during his presidential campaign, then-Texas Gov. George Bush refused. "I'm confident that every person that has been put to death in Texas, under my watch, has been guilty of the crime charged and has had full access to the court," he said in February 2000.

 Needless to say, many of those who have observed justice, Texas-style, would disagree.

 Unlike Texas, Georgia's death penalty apparatus has managed to escape national scrutiny; like Texas, Georgia's system is severely flawed. There are police and prosecutors in this state, as elsewhere, who eye the landscape for the usual suspects, build a case with flimsy evidence and ride community hysteria over crime to a quick conviction and capital punishment.

 Making life easier for those prosecutors, Georgia provides no statewide public defender system with experienced lawyers to aid poor people accused of crimes. Instead, a poor defendant in rural Georgia might end up with an appointed attorney with no experience, no staff and no interest in saving his client. Countless inmates on Georgia's death row have been represented by attorneys who more closely resemble Don Knotts' Barney Fife than Andy Griffith's Matlock.

 Odds are, Georgia has already executed an innocent man or two . . . or three . . . or 10. We don't want to look too closely.