Although states such as Illinois have been steering away from the death penalty, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is trying to bring it back to his state.
The Republican governor formed a committee that will meet this week to write a bill that would attempt to reinstate capital punishment, said Nicole St. Peters, a spokesman for Romney. The group of legal and forensic experts will try to minimize problems some defendants have had with inadequate representation and forensic testing. St. Peters said the bill should be finalized soon and will be filed early next year.
“Some murders deserve the ultimate penalty,” she said. “The governor believes that the death penalty can be a deterrent.”
Massachusetts is one of 12 states in the United States without the death penalty. In recent years officials in Massachusetts have attempted to bring the death penalty back, but those efforts have failed.
St. Peters said the governor believes recent advancements in forensic science — such as strides in DNA testing — can alleviate some concerns about wrongful convictions.
The committee will work to remedy other concerns about loopholes that exist in states with the death penalty and find ways to ensure defendants who are eligible for the death penalty get proper proceedings and adequate legal counsel.
The experts also will focus on punishments for specific crimes such as terrorism and heinous murders, St. Peters said.
Death penalty reform also is a concern of Northwestern’s Center on Wrongful Convictions. The center, which influenced former Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s decision to clear the state’s death row last year, now is pushing for death penalty reform in Illinois. The center’s lobbying has helped measures such as videotaping confessions pass through the state legislature.
After hearing about the Massachusetts committee in late September, Robert Warden, associate director at NU’s center, said he welcomes Romney’s attempt to examine flaws in the death penalty.
Warden said science has the potential to improve some of the problems with the death penalty.
“I’m interested to see what it is and if it will work,” Warden said.
Weinberg sophomore Dan Valencia said he agreed and he thinks the committee created to fix the loopholes of the death penalty system is a step in the right direction for reform.
“I think it will help reduce crimes,” he said.
But David Protess, a journalism professor and founding director of the Medill Innocence Project, said he disagrees with Romney’s attempt to bring back the death penalty.
Protess’ research and work with the Medill Innocence Project, along with the investigative classwork of his students, helped free four wrongfully convicted death row inmates and influenced Ryan’s decision to clear death row. Protess said the death penalty cannot work — even with scientific improvements — because of the human element in the judicial system.
“The death penalty will always be flawed because it is administered by humans, and humans will always make mistakes,” he said. “If you reinstitute it, all that will happen is that more innocent people will be sent to death.”
Protess said that since the mid-’90s states have realized the death penalty cannot deter crime and that the trend has been to restrict the number of death-eligible offenses.
“The bottom line is that the effort to reinstate (the death penalty) is purely political and will fail in states like Massachusetts,” he said.
