Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy,
Chief Sponsor, Innocence Protection Act
News Conference On Citizen Petitions
Sept. 24, 2002

We have come many miles since we first introduced the Innocence Protection
Act back in February 2000. We have helped show how and why the death
penalty process is broken.

We have built a bipartisan coalition supporting reforms that address those problems.

And we have turned another corner in getting these reforms enacted.  The public knows and understands the issues here.

These petitions show that, once again, the people are ahead of the politicians.  They know the death penalty machinery is broken.  They are concerned when they learn that more than 100 people have been released from death row – not on technicalities, but because they were innocent.

The Innocence Protection Act addresses the very same problems that the public is concerned about.

          We have a great deal of momentum right now.  Thirty-one members of the Senate
and 246 members of the House are cosponsors of the bill.  Cosponsors are Democrats and Republicans, supporters of the death penalty and opponents,
liberals and conservatives.

There have been multiple hearings on this bill, in both houses, over the past two
years.

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently approved a version of the bill by a vote of 12 to 7.

Now is the time to act.  Now, it’s certainly true that the legislative agenda is
brimming at this late point in the congressional session.  Why should this bill be on the plate?

If we put ourselves in the place of those who are wrongly convicted, we surely
would act.  A year may not seem like a long time on Capitol Hill, but it is an eternity for someone sitting, wrongfully convicted, in a death row prison cell.

For every wrongfully convicted person on death row there is a true killer who may
still be on the streets.  The parade of wrongfully convicted people being released
from death row undermines public confidence in our system of justice.

These close calls should concentrate our minds and focus our will to act.

Will    Will we act this year?  I hope so.  We can carry this across the goal line this year if the Administration and congressional leaders work with us in good faith.

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