Flaws in the death penalty’s implementation in eight states warrant a nationwide moratorium on executions, says the American Bar Association. An ABA unit will release data on Monday from a three-year study. The report discusses problems common to the eight states, including “major racial disparities, incompetent indigent defense services and irregular clemency review processes [that make] those death penalty systems operate unfairly.” States in the study are Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
The ABA will discuss the report in a program Monday in Washington, D.C., with Stephen Hanlon, chair of the steering committee that compiled the report, and former Indiana Gov. Joseph Kernan; Phyllis Crocker of Cleveland Marshall School of Law and chair of the Ohio Assessment Team; criminologist Ray Paternoster of the University of Maryland; Chris Slobogin, University of Florida law professor; former Judge Morris Overstreet of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and Seth Miller of the Florida Innocence Project.
Link: http://cjj.mn-8.net