U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy

(Feb 11) Opening Remarks of Senator Patrick Leahy, Chief Sponsor, the Innocence Protection Act (S.2073) News Conference on the Bill’s Introduction

February 10, 2000

A few days ago, Governor Ryan imposed a new moratorium on the death penalty in his State of Illinois after it was shown that not one, not two, but 13 innocent people had been sentenced to death. But wrongful convictions and death row errors are not just an Illinois problem; this is a national crisis.

Clyde Charles is here with us from Louisiana today, and Kirk Bloodsworth is here from Maryland. They can tell you firsthand that innocent people get wrongly convicted across the country; between them, they spent close to 30 years of their lives in prison for crimes that they did not commit. I cannot imagine what that is like, but you will hear from them. And as you listen to these innocent citizens, bear this is mind: these are not isolated cases. Clyde and Kirk got lucky, if you can call it that. In America in the last 20 years, for every 7 people executed, 1 person sentenced to death was later proved to be innocent.

Perhaps the most urgent problem in the administration of our capital punishment laws is the failure of some states to provide competent representation to defendants facing the death penalty. Most of those defendants cannot afford their own lawyers. Many states are simply unwilling to make sure they have proper representation. The result is what you would expect. Defendants too often find their lives placed in the hands of lawyers who are hopelessly incompetent – lawyers who were drunk during the trial; lawyers who were fast asleep during the trial; and lawyers who never bothered to investigate the case or even meet with their client before the trial.

States that choose to impose capital punishment must be prepared to foot the bill, and the public and Congress have an obligation to make sure they do. Congress gives hundreds of millions of dollars to the States each year to spend on law enforcement, staff and prisons.

I came to the Senate after working for several years as a prosecutor. The saddest fact of all, to me, is that the society facing this crisis is not a medieval one. It is our 21st Century America, the wealthiest, most technically proficient and most powerful nation on earth. Americans disagree about a lot of things, including whether we should have a death penalty at all.

But we share a love of justice, and we expect our institutions to work properly. One vindication for every seven executions is not a criminal justice system that's working properly, it's Russian roulette. The American people are entitled to expect something better from their government than "whoops, we executed the wrong guy."

The American people fundamentally understand that not only does our criminal justice system succeeds whenever we convict someone who is guilty; it also succeeds whenever an innocent person is exonerated. It is just plain wrong for the world's greatest nation to go into the 21st Century tolerating such mistakes when they can be prevented at minimal cost. That is what we aim to do with this common-sense bill.

There is nothing abstract about this crisis and there is nothing abstract about how to solve it. The bill I have introduced is not about whether, in theory, you support or oppose the death penalty. Polls show that Americans are divided on that question. But polls also show an overwhelming consensus that we should not execute innocent people, and that everyone has the right to a fair trial with a competent lawyer.

The public expects us to stop posturing about being "tough on crime" and actually do something to make the criminal justice system works. When I took on an effort to ban the use of anti-personnel landmines, I found that the public quickly understood that civilized societies cannot accept use of a weapon that indiscriminately kills the innocent. I believe that same sense of decency and common sense is going to prevail in this crisis, too.

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