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| Report Urges Curbs to Reform Death Penalty |
| By Reuters |
| Published: 07/06/2001 |
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A nonpartisan panel is recommending that lawmakers ban the execution of mentally retarded and juvenile killers, raise and enforce standards for defense lawyers and let juries impose life sentences without parole, the Washington Post reported recently. The Committee to Prevent Wrongful Executions spent a year studying capital punishment in the United States in an effort to suggest reforms that opponents and proponents of the death penalty could support. The group, which includes judges, former prosecutors and victims' advocates, came up with 18 proposals aimed at making the death penalty more reliable and less open to chance by setting national standards for prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and juries, according to The Post. 'It's a practical recognition that the death penalty is going to be part of our judicial system ...,' Beth Wilkinson, a former federal prosecutor who sought the death penalty for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh before entering private practice, told The Post. The group included former FBI director William Sessions, a strong supporter of capital punishment, and David Bruck, a South Carolina lawyer who has built a national reputation representing death row inmates. The group urged states and Congress to set mandatory minimum standards for defense lawyers and pay them adequately; limit the death penalty to people who intended to kill and eliminate it for the retarded and juvenile killers; and give juries the explicit option of life without parole. |
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