Bauen

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Why even bother with a trial?

So some Congressional Republicans want to limit habeas corpus hearings in federal courts for capital cases. Sounds like a good idea considering the following:

A study headed by Columbia University statistician and political scientist Andrew Gelman of all 5,826 death sentences imposed in the United States between 1973 and 1995 found that 68 per cent were reversed on appeal.

The most common reasons were "egregiously incompetent lawyering, prosecutorial misconduct or suppression of evidence, misintruction of jurors or biased judges or jurors," said the study published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

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