Death penalty figures rejected

Ed Koch and Erin Neff

Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2002 | 11 a.m.

A second report from Columbia University on use of the death penalty faults Nevada and Clark County for errors in capital punishment cases.

Like the first report done in 2000, the new study, released Monday, came under immediate criticism by local officials.

The study by law professor James Liebman ranked Clark County 63rd among 244 counties studied in death verdicts per 1,000 homicides eligible for the death penalty. He also noted that 64 percent of death verdicts in the county were reversed.

Between 1973 and 1995, Clark County had 71 death verdicts and 1,288 homicides that were eligible for the death penalty, making the state's rate 55.12, the study said.

The report found the overall error rate for capital cases in the state was 68 percent.

"I don't know where they get their numbers, but I have to question those figures," Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Owens said this morning. "I am very skeptical of this study."

Owens said in Clark County, only 54 percent of cases -- 65 of 120 -- that were eligible for the death penalty in the past five years were tried as death penalty cases. Owens said based on his experience, 64 percent of such cases are not returned to his office to be retried.

"Columbia is a fine institution, but we have discovered over the years that statistics from the Justice Department are much more reliable than those from the world of academia," Owens said.

In his new study, "A Broken System II: Why there is So Much Error in Capital Cases and What Can Be Done about It," Liebman found that nationwide there was serious reversible error in seven of every 10 capital convictions in nearly 5,500 cases between 1973 and 1995.

The study found that the most common errors were serious ones: 37 percent for incompetent defense, 20 percent for faulty juror instructions and 19 percent for prosecutor misconduct.

"American capital sentences are persistently and systematically fraught with serious error," Liebman said.

Owens said the appeals system weeds out the bad verdicts.

"That is not a sign that the system is broken, but rather that these cases are being highly scrutinized by the high court -- a careful gantlet that is run to review the process to guarantee the validity of the court cases."

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, who is chairing a legislative interim committee studying the death penalty, said the Columbia research will be thoroughly discussed at the committee's Feb. 21 meeting.

"We've arraigned to have the study's author testify via videoconference," Leslie said.

When a similar report, "a Broken System: Rates in Capital Cases,' by Liebman came out in September 2000, a spokesperson for the Nevada Attorney General's office called parts of it "flat wrong."

A review of state records at that time showed Liebman used statistics supplied only by defense lawyers and those opposed to the death penalty.