The Toronto star

Time to kill death penalty?

U.S. opposition to `national shame' of Death Row grows

William Walker

WASHINGTON - Ray Krone spent 11 years on Death Row, convicted of stabbing 36-year-old Arizona bartender Kim Ancona to death in 1991.

 In April, DNA tests proved the saliva and blood found on Ancona came not from Krone but from a convicted sex offender who police now say was the killer.

 Krone's release from prison wasn't the only reason he made headlines and newscasts across the nation. In fact, he had another, and even greater distinction: The former mailman became the 100th Death Row prisoner to be exonerated since 1973.

 While Krone enjoyed his first month of freedom, U.S. courts and lawmakers were scrambling to crack down on a capital punishment system one calls "a national shame." And Krone's release has fuelled the most intense American death penalty debate in decades, sparking new demands to abolish the death penalty � or at least put it on hold � until reforms are in place to prevent the execution of innocents.

 In Maryland yesterday, Governor Parris Glendening imposed a moratorium on executions until the state completes a study of whether there is racial bias in the use of the death penalty. Only one other state that has capital punishment, Illinois, has imposed a similar moratorium.

 Now judges and politicians are saying that with 3,700 Americans awaiting execution in the 38 states that allow the death penalty, it's time to halt the shame of innocent people trapped in a fatally flawed system.

 "The time for denial is over," said Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy. "We know that the system has identifiable flaws.

 "The system did not work for Ray Krone in his first trial, or in his second. We know that it has claimed innocent victims. Ray Krone lost 10 years of his life while Arizona's women were endangered because the wrong man was in jail."

 Leahy, a Democrat, and a Republican counterpart have co-sponsored a bill called the Innocence Protection Act. In the House of Representatives, a similar bipartisan bill to drastically overhaul the death penalty is co-sponsored by half the members.

 "We must stop, now, living in denial. To expunge the national shame of denial, we need ... a federal guarantee of competent counsel and of DNA testing wherever relevant," Leahy said after Krone's release.

"It is past time to enact these reforms and to end this cruel game of Russian roulette."

 Democratic Senator Russ Feingold is taking it one step further, sponsoring the Death Penalty Moratorium Act to halt executions altogether until answers can be found.

 "We can do more than just talk or apologize (to victims like Krone)," he said. "An apology is the first step. But we can also act. We can act to ensure that not another innocent person faces execution."

 The U.S. courts are also springing into action. Since Krone's release, the Supreme Court has decided it will hear two cases challenging the death penalty. One will examine whether the mentally handicapped can be executed; the other whether judges alone can sentence someone to death. That case could lead to the quashing of 800 death penalties in nine states where judges alone issue the sentence, if the Supreme Court finds defendants have a constitutional right to have juries make death penalty decisions.

 Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said recently the system needs to be overhauled, or scrapped entirely.

`It's no longer a question of whether we're going to abolish the death penalty, but when.'

David Elliot,

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

"After 20 years on the high court, I have to acknowledge that serious questions are being raised about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered in this country," O'Connor told lawmakers in Nebraska last month.

 "Unfortunately, as the rate of executions has increased, problems in the way the death penalty has been administered have become more apparent. ... The system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed."

 And a New York judge hearing a drug and murder trial said he's likely to declare the death penalty unconstitutional in a decision expected in June.

 "If the court were compelled to decide this issue today, it would ... grant the defendants' motion to dismiss all death penalty aspects of this case on the grounds that the federal death penalty statute is unconstitutional," District Court Judge Jed Rakoff said.

 Illinois Governor George Ryan, a staunch conservative who has long favoured the death penalty, placed the moratorium on Illinois executions two years ago as a result of a Northwestern University study that proved nine innocent men were on death row.

 Ryan then commissioned a groundbreaking study involving police officers, prosecutors, victims' families and community leaders that concluded the Illinois law needed to be vastly changed, or abolished.

 The U.S. death penalty system is "one of the most notorious train wrecks of American politics," said noted author and lawyer Scott Turow, who was a member of the Illinois commission.

 Turow said 65 per cent of Illinois death penalty sentences have been reversed due to errors in the last decade, while nationally the figure is about 43 per cent. He told the Wall Street Journal those numbers "bespeak a system which ... fails with dismaying frequency to produce legally acceptable results."

 Now, three of four candidates seeking to succeed Ryan as governor this fall say they favour extending the Illinois death penalty moratorium.

 With the November U.S. elections looming, it's a trend nationwide. The Maryland moratorium came as Glendening issued a stay on the execution of a 44-year-old black man scheduled to die by injection next week for the murder of a white woman.

 "It is imperative that I, as well as our citizens, have complete confidence that the legal process involved in capital cases is fair and impartial," the governor said.

 In George W. Bush's home state of Texas, the most active death penalty jurisdiction in the U.S., 87 per cent of prisoners executed are racial minorities, and several studies have shown Texas prosecutors are far more likely to seek the death penalty in cases involving non-white accused.

 "Five years ago, the biggest political thing was to expand the death penalty and get tough on crime, so to me this is a tremendous change," said Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

 It's been half a century since American advocates of abolition, like Bohman, have considered their chances for success so strong. Anti-death penalty lobby groups are intensifying campaigns in dozens of states from California to New Jersey.

 "It's no longer a question of whether we're going to abolish the death penalty, but when. This is a year when we've had news story after news story about travesties in the system," said David Elliot of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

 Krone told reporters he doesn't have time to be bitter. After spending his first day of freedom floating in a Phoenix swimming pool, taking calls on his new cellphone and eating steak, he said he just wants to "start over."