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Dallas DA talking about capital case review and a quasi-moratorium

By Douglas A. Berman

The Dallas Morning News has this notable report about a local DA talking about reviewing all pending capital cases because of innocence concerns.  Here are the basics:Troubled that innocent people have been imprisoned by faulty prosecutions, District Attorney Craig Watkins said Monday that he would re-examine nearly 40 death penalty convictions and would seek to halt executions, if necessary, to give the reviews time to proceed. Mr. Watkins told The Dallas Morning News that problems exposed by 19 DNA-based exonerations in Dallas County have convinced him he should ensure that no death row inmate is actually innocent. "It's not saying I'm putting a moratorium on the death penalty," said Mr. Watkins, whose reviews would be of all of the cases now on death row handled by his predecessors...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on September 16, 2008 (boomark / email).