This,below, is heartening news.  At the very time that the Gov. who has
executed more people than any in history (Gov. George 'pleeez don't kill
me'Bush)-- that George II is running for president.  Incidentally for
many of us this is a problem; on policy there is no way to distinguish
between Gore and B.; but Bush is very clearly a despicable human
being--so it's Nader, obviously the best choice, but ruled out by the
system; or Buchanan who does see clearly the corp. control of this
country, but is at least a modified racist.  However he has one thing
going for him--he is roundly hated and feared by the corporate media.
wcm
>
> From: Rich Winkel <[log in to unmask]>
>
> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20000612/ts/crime_capital_dc_1.html
>
> Monday June 12 12:18 AM ET
>
> Study Cites 68 Pct Error in Capital Case Appeals
>
> By Grant McCool
>
> NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. death penalty system is ''collapsing under
> the weight of its own mistakes'' according to a report released Monday on a
> statistical study of capital appeals that found two thirds of cases were
> reversed by courts because of errors.
>
> The research headed by Columbia University School of Law Professor James
> Leibman, an opponent of the death penalty, also showed that of the 5,760
> death sentences imposed in the United States between 1973 and 1995, only
> 313 or 5.4 percent resulted in execution. Leibman said the study upheld
> claims that capital appeals take too long -- a national average of nine
> years in the period studied.
>
> At least one pro-death penalty academic who read the report, University of
> Utah law professor Paul Cassell, interpreted the statistics differently. He
> said he believed the data showed the system was working and criticized the
> report as ``recycled material'' issued for ``political purposes'' as U.S.
> Senators studied a bill on proposed legislative changes.
>
> The growing national debate on the U.S. capital punishment system heated up
> in February when the pro-death penalty governor of Illinois declared a
> moratorium on executions, citing 13 death row inmates released since 1977
> after their convictions were overturned, outnumbering the 12 executed.
>
> Leibman said in an interview the study showed that ``errors that cause
> individual cases to pop into the public eye and then cause Illinois to pop
> into the public eye, really is a process that is epidemic throughout the
> system, state to state, year to year.''
>
> The report, ``A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995''
> said the most common errors that led to reversals at the post-conviction
> stage were ``ineffective assistance of counsel at a very egregious level''
> for defendants and ''prosecutorial withholding evidence of innocence and
> keeping it from the jury.'' In some cases, racial discrimination in
> selecting a jury was cited as a reason for reversal.
>
> It said the overall rate of serious error was 68 percent and the remaining
> 32 percent of cases were found to be reliable. The study was based on
> research into court records of the three stages of review of capital cases
> before they reached executive level -- state direct appeal, state
> post-conviction and federal habeas corpus.
>
> Beth Wilkinson, one of the prosecutors who tried Timothy McVeigh and Terry
> Nichols for the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, said the report would
> help provide a factual, rather than an emotional basis for the debate on
> capital punishment.
>
> ``Only five percent of the death sentences were actually implemented and I
> think that would be difficult to accept if you were a victim or believe in
> the system because there is supposed to be some finality,'' said Wilkinson,
> who favors the death penalty in very limited circumstances.
>
> ``It tells me that we probably are putting too many people on trial for
> death sentences, cases that shouldn't have been death cases from the outset.''
>
> Utah's Cassell argued that the use of the term ``error rates'' was
> counter-intuitive.
>
> ``I think most Americans would be interested in the error rate in the sense
> of how many people are wrongfully convicted and that can be derived from
> the study,'' Cassell said. ``Based on that data, the death penalty system
> is more than 99 percent accurate in that more than 99 percent of the time
> the system identifies the proper person. There is no claim that anyone has
> been wrongfully executed.''
>
> The report found Virginia, the state with the second highest number of
> executions after Texas, had caught mistakes at a rate of 18 percent. While
> Leibman suggested ``something there is not happening'' death penalty
> proponent Cassell argued ``the judges there are doing their job and maybe
> we should move them to California, where liberal judges are going on their
> personal views.''
>
> The study found an overall error rate of 87 percent in California and 52
> percent in Texas.
>
> ``Our 23 years worth of results reveal a death penalty system collapsing
> under the weight of its own mistakes,'' the report said. ``They reveal a
> system in which lives and public order are at stake, yet for decades has
> made more mistakes than we would tolerate in far less important activities.''
>
> There are no definitive cases of innocent people having been executed, but
> according to the Death Penalty Information Center public policy group, 87
> people have been released from death row since 1973 -- eight were cleared
> by DNA evidence and the rest for a variety of reasons, from recanted
> testimony to evidence overlooked or withheld to inadequate legal
> representation.
>
> A Gallup Poll in February revealed that 66 percent of Americans still
> support the death sentence for murder, although that's fewer than just six
> years ago, when support reached its peak at 80 percent. The U.S. Supreme
> Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
>
> Efforts to make changes to the system at the state and federal levels are
> underway, with about half a dozen state legislatures reexamining death
> penalty practices. Last month, the New Hampshire state legislature
> symbolically abolished the death penalty. The governor made it known she
> would veto the measure and no one was on death row.
>
> Last week, Vermont Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy, a former prosecutor, led a
> bipartisan group of lawmakers in a bid to pass a bill that would give
> people convicted of serious violent crimes the right to present DNA
> evidence that may not have been available at the time of their initial
> conviction.
>