Panel Calls for Illinois Death Penalty Reforms
from the oops,-goofed-again.-sorry dept.
From Reuters comes the story of a report to be issued soon by the Illinois commission charged with coming up with reforms to reduce the number of innocent people executed in the state. Among the suggestions are the outlawing of convictions based solely on the uncorroborated testimony of accomplices and jailhouse informants, and the videotaping of the entire police interrogation process, rather than just the confession obtained at the end. The commission unanimously concluded that no reforms would eliminate the possibility of innocent people being executed (no reforms short of doing away with the death penalty altogether, that is, a step that a majority of panelists reportedly supported). The commission, which spent two years preparing its report, was impaneled by Illinois Governor George Ryan after DNA testing led to a wave of overturned death-penalty convictions in the state.
