Innocence Protection Act

In United States federal criminal law, the Innocence Protection Act is the first federal death penalty reform to be enacted. The Act seeks to ensure the fair administration of the death penalty and minimize the risk of executing innocent people.^[1] The Innocence Protection Act of 2001, introduced in the Senate as S. 486 and the House of Representatives as H.R. 912, was included as Title IV of the omnibus Justice for All Act of 2004 (H.R. 5107), signed into law on October 30, 2004 by President George W. Bush as public law no. 108-405.

The Justice For All Act is the product of a bi-partisan, bicameral compromise led by then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ranking Member Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), then-House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA). It passed the House by an overwhelming vote of 393 to 14 on October 6, 2004 and the Senate by voice vote three days later.^[2]

The text of the Act amended the United States Code to include procedures for post-conviction DNA testing in federal court. Through the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program, the act established a federal grant program to provide money to states to defray the costs of post-conviction DNA testing. The act additionally contains provisions for increasing the quality of representation for indigent defendants in state capital cases, and for compensating victims of wrongful conviction.

Death penalty

The Innocence Protection Act is the first federal death penalty reform to be enacted. Since the federal reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976,in 2002 more than 100 people have been released from death rows across the United States because of procedural errors or newly discovered evidence of their innocence.^[3]

The Innocence Protection Act is a first attempt at ensuring innocent people are not put to death. Thirty-six states and the federal government have enacted legislation that permits the courts to impose death as a criminal sentence.^[4] Of those thirty-six states, Texas executed the most inmates during 2009 with 24 executions.^[5] The total number of executions in the United States in 2009 was 52.^[6] In 2009, the total number of inmates serving a death sentence in the United States was 3,173.^[7]

Post-conviction DNA testing

Advances in science and in particular, DNA testing, has become a method for innocent people who have been wrongly convicted to be exonerated.^[8] DNA testing is a predominant forensic technique which makes it possible to obtain conclusive results in cases in which previous testing had been inconclusive.^[9] Postconviction testing has been requested not only in cases in which DNA testing was never done, but also in cases in which the more refined technology may result in an indisputable evidence.^[10]

The Innocence Protection Act allows convicted individuals access to DNA testing if they met certain conditions such as the possibility that testing could produce new material evidence that would raise a reasonable probability that the individual did not commit the offense.^[11] Among other restrictions, it limits new testing to evidence that was not previously tested and generally requires it to be done within 36 months of conviction.^[12] All fifty U.S. states have post-conviction DNA testing access statutes; However, it may be harder to access in some states than others.^[13]

References

External links

• http://www.innocenceproject.org
• http://www.thejusticeproject.org
• Timeline of the Innocence Protection Act from The Justice Project
• Text of S.486 as introduced in the Senate, March 7 2001
• Summary of the Justice for All Act of 2004, from the Library of Congress
• Text of Public Law No: 108-405, from the Government Printing Office
• Punishment from Bureau of Justice Statistics
• Postconviction DNA Testing from DNA Initiative