That's the title of an AP report written by Alan Scher Zagier rgarding the ABA Missouri Death Penalty Assessment. It's via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; it's also available via the Columbia Missourian. Here's an extended excerpt:
When the American Bar Association sought to review Missouri's death penalty laws as part of a nationwide study of capital punishment, it turned to a collection of the state's most esteemed lawyers, judges and law professors for help.
The two-year ABA study, released earlier this year, relied on detailed responses from law enforcement agencies, medical examiners, crime labs and others involved in handing down the state's ultimate legal sanction. But one group was largely and notably absent from the discussion: the prosecutors who decide whether to seek the death penalty in the first place.
Several members of the panel that worked on the study said the prosecutors' lack of cooperation hindered efforts to fully evaluate the death penalty system in a state that executed 68 people since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, trailing only Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma and Florida.
ABA surveys sent to prosecutors in Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia, Cape Girardeau and St. Charles went unanswered, while the state Attorney General's Office provided limited information. Daniel White, prosecutor in Clay County in suburban Kansas City, was the only survey recipient to write back with his own thoughts but declined to participate, saying he did not want to "embolden enemies of justice."
White, who has sought the death penalty just twice in nearly 20 years, said sharing his insights would "generate a public document subsequently available to others who may not have justice as their primary mission."
"I can't quantify the soul searching, legal research, fact finding and energy expended in first, arriving at the decision to see the death penalty and second, actually going forward," White wrote. "It's not an easy decision; nor should it be."
The ABA sought details on the training and qualifications of assistant prosecutors who handle capital cases, including their caseloads. The association also asked about office budgets and salaries, number of previous and active death penalty cases, procedures for sharing discovery evidence with defense lawyers, interactions with families of victims and policies on plea bargains.
The study panel had members from Missouri, including U.S. District Court judges Nanette Laughrey and Stephen Limbaugh Jr. and Harold Lowenstein, a former state representative who spent 28 years as a judge for the Missouri Court of Appeals and is now in private practice in Kansas City. The panel also included two MU law professors and another from St. Louis University.
A 436-page report that came from the study includes recommendations that mostly would require legislative action. They include improved procedures for preserving biological evidence and a call for limits on the 17 aggravating circumstances under which prosecutors can seek death against murder suspects.
The Missouri Death Penalty Assessment Report is available at the ABA website.
Earlier coverage of the ABA's Missouri Assessment begins at the link; also available, coverage of Missouri's decision to switch lethal injection drugs.
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