Base Decision About Execution Moratorium on Facts, Not Rhetoric, Professor Says

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Durham, NC -- Any decision about whether the government should follow through on the American Bar Association’s call for a moratorium on executions should be based on facts, not rhetoric from either side of the issue, says a Duke University law professor.

“What is needed now is for critics of the reports to set aside their broad indirect attacks and focus instead on the detailed findings of facts, supported by citations to the records from which the information was obtained,” said James E. Coleman, who chaired the ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project from 2001, when it was created, until last year. “If the facts are supported by the record, the burden shifts to critics to explain what they will do to address the deficiencies.”

On Monday, the ABA released the findings of its Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project’s three-year study of how the death penalty is administered in eight representative states. The study -- conducted by a team of people that included elected officials, current and former judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers and academics -- concluded that the death penalty systems in all eight states were deeply flawed.

“Although each of the state reports received a great deal of attention when it was released in the state, there also were predictable reactions from officials responsible for administrating the systems,” Coleman said. “These included claims that the teams that did the study were made up of people opposed to the death penalty or those not sufficiently supportive of it and, therefore, the report was an effort to abolish the death penalty. Others criticized the methods used to collect information.

“Some admitted there were problems that could be remedied, but denied the problems were as pervasive as reported. Few of the critics, however, actually challenged the detailed specific findings.”

Coleman, who teaches classes on criminal law, legal ethics, capital punishment, and wrongful convictions, said it is important for reporters who cover the criminal justice system to press officials “to respond to the facts, and not continue to avoid accountability by deflecting attention to irrelevant matters. As we learned with wrongful convictions, defense lawyers who sounded the alarm about innocent people being convicted were right; the fact that they were defense lawyers was irrelevant. Similarly, the focus now should be the well-documented message, not the messenger.”