Thursday, 28 September 2000

By Paul Davenport
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/000928RDeathPenalty.html

PHOENIX - A state commission launched its review of how Arizona implements capital punishment as Attorney General Janet Napolitano stressed that the death penalty itself is not up for debate.

"That is the law of Arizona," she said yesterday during the first meeting of the 30-member Capital Case Commission. Members include prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, victim advocates and others.

Instead, the commission appointed by Napolitano will analyze how the death penalty operates in Arizona, identify any problems and make recommendations to fix them, she said.

While Illinois has imposed a death-penalty moratorium, "one of the things I want to ensure as the chief legal officer of Arizona is that we do not become an Illinois," Napolitano said.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan this year imposed the moratorium in that state because 13 people sentenced to death were released after being deemed wrongly or unfairly convicted.

Issues being studied by the Arizona commission include costs, reasons why death sentences are overturned, quality of legal representation and why the death penalty is sought for some murderers but not others.

The commission's research will cover rural areas as well as big cities and will include making sure that race or ethnicity "are not playing a part in the administration of the death penalty," Napolitano said.

Napolitano appointed the task force in the wake of a death-penalty case that lasted 18 years before execution.

Arizona has executed 85 people, 21 of them since resuming the death penalty in 1992 after a 29-year hiatus.

Even before the commission held its first meeting, some death penalty opponents said the review apparently will not go far enough.

The four-month timetable set for the commission is too short for a thorough, comprehensive study, said Eleanor Eisenberg, executive director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union and co-chairman of the Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty.

"Illinois is taking two years with a moratorium to do this in a thoughtful and prudent way," Eisenberg said Tuesday. "We are concerned that this is a rush to judgment on what is literally a matter of life and death."

Napolitano's four-month timetable is partly aimed at producing recommendations by January so that legislators can consider possible changes to state laws during their 2001 regular session.

Arizona State University researchers began collecting data for the commission in June.