On Capitol Hill legislation is pending in both chambers...

On Capitol Hill legislation is pending in both chambers that would reduce the risk of executing innocent people. In the past year many states have enacted death penalty reforms. The Columbia University studies show that the errors most often leading to reversal were incompetent legal counsel, suppression of evidence by police or prosecutors, and improper jury instructions by judges. Realistically, state and federal appeals judges cannot be relied upon to catch all the mistakes, especially given the limited availability of experienced volunteer lawyers to handle capital appeals, and stringent rules for reversing a death verdict that permit egregious errors to slip through. The proposed legislation would establish national standards for the representation of capital defendants, and provide the resources to meet them. The measure - the bipartisan Innocence Protection Act - would also require preservation of biological evidence that may later prove crucial on appeal, and ensure federal and state death row inmates access to DNA testing if that could help exonerate them. The House version, sponsored by Ray LaHood, a Republican, and Bill Delahunt, a Democrat, has 218 co-sponsors. That number, about 1/2 the House, reflects the growing unease across the country - and across party lines - about perpetuating a death-penalty system prone to unfairness and mistakes.