In 2000, the Constitution Project created the Death Penalty Committee to address the deeply disturbing risk that Americans are being wrongfully convicted of capital crimes or wrongfully sentenced to death. The Committee was convened to examine our country’s present course, and to recommend ways to ensure that fundamental fairness is guaranteed for all.
The Committee’s members are supporters and opponents of the death penalty, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. They are former judges, prosecutors, and other public officials, as well as victim advocates, defense lawyers, journalists, scholars, and other concerned Americans. They have extensive and varied experience in the criminal justice system. They may disagree on much, including whether abolition of the death penalty is warranted, but they are united in their profound concern, that around the country procedural safeguards and other assurances of fundamental fairness in the administration of capital punishment have been revealed to be deeply flawed.
The Committee’s mission statement says that individuals who commit violent crimes deserve swift and certain punishment. Some of the members of the committee believe that the range of punishment may include death; others do not. But they all agree that no one should be denied basic constitutional protections, including a competent lawyer, a fair trial, and full judicial review of the conviction and sentence. The denial of such protections heightens the danger of wrongful conviction and sentence.
Ultimately, the committee members’ own experiences continue to support their conclusion that the current system is a disservice to those most closely connected with it. They well know of the conscientious, diligent, and often heroic efforts of those who are judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and law enforcement officers, and who must often serve under the most demanding of circumstances. They know that it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for these public servants to carry out their responsibilities and that, as a result, those the system is designed to protect instead frequently feel victimized by it. The Committee’s commitment to protecting the interests of all of these individuals and to secure society mandates urgent, dramatic, and system-wide changes to America’s capital punishment systems.
