US: Two years ago, in a move widely praised by the opponents of the death penalty, Illinois's Governor George Ryan temporarily suspended all death sentences in the wake of the exoneration of 13 death row inmates in the state over a decade. The move led to a substantial boost in the campaign for moratoriums on capital punishment to allow time for states to put right the many widely admitted flaws in the current system.
Yesterday, the bipartisan committee established by Mr Ryan to examine Illinois' practice in death penalty cases and options has reported and set out 85 recommendations on ways to prevent unwarranted executions. The committee also comes out by a narrow majority for the abolition of the death penalty altogether and argues that if its less radical reform recommendations are accepted the cases of the 160 prisoners on Illinois' death row should be reviewed.
The much-awaited report will certainly provide new fodder for the abolitionists on aspects of the very widely different practise in the 37 states which still retain capital punishment.
"Many states and national leaders will look to see the recommendations that Illinois comes up with as a model for what else needs to be done in other states," said Mr Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington DC, which researches capital punishment but takes no position on it.
The 207-page report admits that no system "given human nature and frailties" could ever be devised that would absolutely guarantee that an innocent person would not be executed.
Among its recommendations are the viedotaping of all interrogations in death penalty cases, the reduction in the number of capital factors making an offender liable for death from 20 to five, the submission of all cases to a state board for review, and the establishment of a state-wide DNA database.
Most recent exonerations have been because new developments in DNA technology have allowed convicted killers to be ruled out of cases.
Implementation of all the report's recommendations, its authors admit, would be expensive, but the alternative, a continuing moratorium or the commutation of more or all sentences by the governor may well prove a stimulus to legislators who still back capital punishment.
The report also recommends the abolition of the death penalty in cases involving the mentally retarded and those whose convictions are based alone on the evidence of a single witness, a prison informer, or a single accomplice.
So far this year 20 people have been executed in the US.
