Getting guilty right

Sen. Susan Collins today is expected to introduce the Innocence Protection Act of 2001, as important a piece of criminal-justice reform as Congress will see this year. The simple goal of this bill is to improve the chances that the people the government executes are actually guilty of the crimes that put them on death row. Both sides in the debate over the death penalty should support this measure.

Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973, 95 people sentenced to die have later been found not guilty; 10 of those were released as a result of new DNA evidence. The 95 were not set free because of some odd legal technicalities but because new evidence arose to demonstrate that they were innocent. Oftentimes, that evidence was found haphazardly – a prisoner mentions something to a district attorney working on another case or a law-school class decides to review the evidence in a capital case in which potential DNA evidence happens to be still available.

In fact, advancements in DNA testing make this bill necessary, but as these re-examined cases in the last few years have shown, the problem of those wrongly convicted extends beyond the demand for greater use of the laboratory. There is the famous “sleeping lawyer” case in 1984, in which a Texas man was convicted of murder and sentenced to die even though his defense attorney snoozed through much of the trial. There are the 1992 Pennsylvania example of a divorce lawyer being assigned to represent a man arrested for a drug-related murder, and the ’97 Oklahoma case in which the defense lawyer for a man charged with murder and rape neglected to tell the jury that someone else had already confessed to the crimes.

The most significant portion of the Innocence Protection Act assigns a commission on capital punishment to set standards for adequate legal representation and makes funding available to states to meet those standards. Maine, of course, doesn’t have a death penalty, but its residents, who could be accused of a federal capital crime or a capital crime in a state with the death penalty, have an interest in seeing this legislation approved. In addition to improving legal defense, the bill establishes rules for DNA testing and encourages states to adopt similar procedures for testing and for preserving biological material as evidence.

President George Bush, who as governor of Texas approved the use of the death penalty numerous times, indicated during the campaign that he would support the Innocence Protection Act. No death-penalty supporter wants to see capital punishment carried out improperly, and opponents of the death penalty, who may wish the legislation went further, should also support a step that improves the chances that innocent people will be set free.

Four years ago, the lack of adequate counsel caused the American Bar Association to call for a moratorium on executions; Illinois Gov. George Ryan last year declared one after evidence of innocent people on death row there turned up. The act being announced today goes after the injustices that led to these acts. Congress should swiftly approve it.