By a vote of 23-12, the California Senate passed a resolution establishing the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a panel of experts who will investigate the state’s criminal justice system and present a series of recommendations to the legislature and governor based on their findings. Members of the panel will be appointed by the Senate Committee on Rules and will be charged with holding a series of meetings and public hearings to determine why innocent individuals have been wrongly convicted in the state and what safeguards should be put into place to improve the current policies. The panel will review existing data and research about California’s justice system and will solicit further comment from scholars, judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, public and private defense attorneys, elected officials, victims’ family members, and other experts. The Senate-imposed deadline for recommendations from the panel is December 31, 2007. The formation of the Commission comes in the wake of a series of reports and developments drawing attention to the flaws in California’s criminal justice system in general, and its death penalty system in particular. A 2003 review of California’s capital punishment system in the Santa Clara Law Review identified more than 80 flaws, including a lack of independent DNA review for prisoners with innocence claims, a lack of training for homicide detectives and lawyers regarding the unreliability of “jailhouse snitches,” and the failure to establish state-wide qualifications, education and training for judges and lawyers handling capital cases. (See California Senate Resolution No. 44 and Press Release from California’s Death Penalty Focus, August 31, 2004) See Innocence and Studies.