A Tennessee leg­isla­tive study com­mit­tee has end­ed its 16-month analy­sis of the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment process and has made rec­om­men­da­tions for achiev­ing a more fair and accu­rate sys­tem:

. Require defense attor­neys in cap­i­tal cas­es to be high­ly qual­i­fied;
. Mandate that defense attor­neys have uni­form access to evi­dence against their clients;
. Require police offi­cers to record all inter­ro­ga­tions relat­ed to a homicide case;

The com­mit­tee also rec­om­mend­ed that the state set timeta­bles for lit­i­gat­ing cap­i­tal cas­es to min­i­mize the time that vic­tims’ fam­i­lies wait dur­ing the appeals process.

Four bills relat­ed to the rec­om­men­da­tions have been intro­duced. Since the committee’s work was lim­it­ed to look­ing for ways to make cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment more fair and accu­rate, they passed a res­o­lu­tion ask­ing the state to com­mis­sion anoth­er more exten­sive study of the issues they did not review. Such issues includ­ed the record keep­ing relat­ed to cap­i­tal cas­es, whether men­tal­ly ill defen­dants should face the death penal­ty, and how to bet­ter serve the fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims. ​“I think my biggest sur­prise, though I had an idea, is that the death penal­ty is a very expen­sive process,” said Rep. Bill Dunn, R‑Knoxville. ​“It has to be in order to get the right ver­dict, but I don’t think the aver­age tax­pay­er knows what it costs to seek this penal­ty.” The com­mit­tee was not able to answer that ques­tion either. The comptroller’s office tes­ti­fied that the state lacked a sys­tem to track the costs of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to the tax­pay­ers.

(K. Howard, ​“Bills aim to reform Tennessee’s death penal­ty,” The Tennessean, February 20, 2009). See Recent Legislation, Studies, and Costs.

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