- Friday August 3

ABA Asks Congress for Moratorium on Executions

By Gail Appleson, Law Correspondent

CHICAGO  - Calling the U.S. death penalty system ''broken'' and ``unacceptable,'' the American Bar Association urged Congress on Friday to stop federal executions until it enacted laws to ensure fairness.Martha Barnett, the Florida lawyer who heads the world's largest legal group, sent letters to the Senate and House Judiciary committees backing a death penalty moratorium just as the ABA's annual meeting got under way in Chicago.Barnett said in the letters she was requesting a suspension of federal executions ``on behalf of the more than 400,000 members'' of the ABA.

``The American Bar Association is not for or against the death penalty,'' she told a news conference. ``We are for the fair administration of the criminal justice system.

'Barnett said that for years there had been anecdotal information that pointed to inequities in the system ``but we now we have empirical data that shows, in fact, this system is broken.''Although the ABA does not have a policy on the death penalty in general, it opposes executing mentally retarded convicts or ones who were juveniles when their crimes were committed.In 1997 the ABA's policymaking body voted to support a moratorium on the death penalty. Last year, the lawyers' group wrote to then President Bill Clinton asking for a suspension of the death penalty on the federal level.At last year's annual meeting, Barnett urged lawyers to take action in their individual states.

APPEAL TO PANELSIn the ABA's latest effort to obtain a moratorium on the death penalty, Barnett asked the Senate and House Judiciary committees to back law two laws aimed at minimizing the risk of executing innocent people.The National Death Penalty Moratorium Act would suspend federal executions until a national commission reviewed the administration of the death penalty. The commission would be required to report to Congress in two years.The other law, the Innocence Protection Act, would improve the quality of legal representation for indigent defendants in capital cases. It also would ensure eligible federal and state inmates access to DNA testing as part of efforts to establish their innocence.Barnett said that in the last 18 months, 11 defendants on death row had been exonerated.

``This situation is unacceptable in our country,'' she wrote.Just last month, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor , a longtime supporter of the death penalty, said in a speech that ``serious questions are being raised about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered in this country.''O'Connor said that it was time to look at minimum standards for appointed counsel in capital cases and at adequate compensation for these lawyers.O'Connor cited the cases of 90 death row inmates exonerated since 1973 before their death sentences could be carried out as evidence that innocent people might have been executed.

The U.S. government resumed federal executions on June 11 after a 38-year hiatus with the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh . A week later, drug lord Juan Raul Garza was executed at the same federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana