Death Penalty News

I don't have links for these articles-- I get them in digest form from a listserve.

March 26

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"People on trial for their lives must have competent lawyers by their
side," he said. "No one should be held to account for a crime he or she did not commit."

Taking him at his word, Congress rolled out the Justice for All Act,
authorizing millions of dollars to help federal, state and local governments address the serious problems that crime victims, prosecutors, defense attorneys and prisoner advocates have complained of for years.

For example, more than 300,000 rape kits and other crime scene evidence are sitting around in crime labs across the country awaiting analysis. The law authorized $755 million to reduce that backlog.

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The law authorizes $375 million to train defense lawyers and prosecutors in capital cases, though the continuing scandal is how stingy some Old South states remain in paying for the defense of indigents charged with capital crimes.

The law has many other provisions that won broad support from groups that are usually at one another's throats. Unfortunately, that fragile
coalition may not last now that Mr. Bush is backtracking by proposing
significantly lower spending than is necessary to carry out the mandates that Justice for All authorized.

(source: Courier-Journal)


TEXAS:

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To right wrongful convictions, the Legislature passed a law in 2001
requiring that the state award up to $25,000 for each year that person is imprisoned. Obviously, the amount of money is not enough to make up for a person's loss of liberty and income. It is a gesture, however, that helps people repair lives trashed by a state error.

Most everyone who views the Sutton case comes to the same conclusion about Sutton's innocence. DNA testing excluded the 23-year-old Houston man as the perpetrator in a 1998 rape. The Houston crime lab that processed the evidence that sent Sutton to prison has since been discredited amid investigations that showed its testing practices were flawed. Gov. Rick Perry rightly granted Sutton a pardon based on innocence.

Science hasn't convinced Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, though.

He is blocking Sutton from the compensation Sutton is certainly owed.
Rosenthal can do that because of a provision that was quietly inserted
into the law in 2003. The provision requires people who were wrongfully imprisoned to obtain letters, from the district attorneys who prosecuted them, admitting that the convictions were a mistake. In other words, it requires prosecutors to admit that they botched the cases.

That is not about to happen in Harris County, where prosecutors relish
putting the "hard" in hard-nosed. Rosenthal is not likely to change his position in the Sutton case, despite the DNA evidence. This is a
prosecutor who has vehemently opposed any pause in executions of Harris County death-row inmates whose convictions were based on evidence from the discredited lab. Even Houston's police chief has called for a pause to retest evidence.

(source: Editorial, Austin American-Statesman, March 25)