The American Bar Association is a voluntary professional organization that provides law school accreditation and programs to assist legal professionals and the public. The ABA recently called for a nationwide moratorium on the death penalty ““ a move that should spark hope in the grassroots efforts of well-meaning students.
The association’s announcement was spurred by the deeply disturbing results of a three-year study of death penalty systems in eight states.
The report notes, among many other damaging observations, that some states do not preserve evidence through the entire legal process, do not require crime laboratories to be accredited and do not punish prosecutors who commit “serious misconduct” in capital cases.
Some prosecutors have attempted to discredit the ABA’s findings, reflecting attitudes rooted deeply in denial. Philadelphia Deputy District Attorney Ron Eisenberg, for instance, told the Philadelphia Enquirer that the ABA’s report is tainted by what he believes is an anti-death-penalty agenda.
I think Eisenberg may just be sensitive about his city’s horrific track record: Since 1986, Philadelphia has executed three inmates on death row, while exonerating five others.
The association’s report reflects a system that has been riddled with problems for years. The organization states on its Web site that 107 inmates on death row have been exonerated since 1973. This number seems incredibly large when one considers that death-penalty cases are rare and that DNA testing, which has been the primary method of exoneration, wasn’t even invented until the mid-1980s.
What finally focused national attention on these issues seems to be the grassroots efforts of students. The majority of exonerations have not taken place because of checks and balances within the system, but because of well-meaning outside interference.
A few years ago, a Northwestern University journalism professor’s and his students’ investigations played key roles in the exonerations of several death-row inmates, including one man who was freed just a few days before his scheduled execution.
In response, former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois commuted the sentences of all 150 of the state’s death-row inmates to life in prison in 2003.
The Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic that works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people through the use of DNA evidence, is staffed primarily by volunteer law students and has also freed death-row inmates.
On its Web site, the Innocence Project takes care to point out that most of its clients are poor and underserved members of the community and do not have the resources to hire legal assistance.
Which begs the question, if some outside organization did not take an interest in the aforementioned innocent people, what would have happened to them?
The answer, though uncomfortable, is obvious. It also points to an even more disturbing likelihood. Despite their best efforts, the student volunteers at Northwestern and the Innocence Project have probably not been able to save everyone.
As The Washington Post aptly proclaimed in a 2000 editorial on innocent people on death row, “there are undoubtedly others, already executed.”
Yet the student efforts will have a much greater impact if all the states respect the ABA’s position and cease implementing the death penalty until all of the flaws of the system have been investigated and eliminated.
If nothing else, it certainly gives hope that the nation will finally turn its attention to these long-ignored problems. It definitely makes me more optimistic about the power of student activism to change local and even national attitudes.
Are you a member of an organization that’s accomplished something great lately?
E-mail Strickland at kstrickland@media.ucla.edu. General comments can be sent to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.