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"Bills aim to reform Tennessee's death penalty," is Kate Howard's report in today's Tennessean.Tennessee's death penalty needs major reform to ensure that people facing execution get fair trials, said members of a legislative study committee which just ended 16 months of analyzing how capital crimes are prosecuted in this state.The study committee, which included people for and against the death penalty, was asked to look for ways to make capital punishment more fairly and accurately applied across the state.Four bills related to the recommendations have been introduced and are sponsored by the committee's chairmen, Sen. Doug Jackson, D-Dickson, and Rep. Kent Coleman, D-Murfreesboro.The committee wants the state legislature to:? 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;? Force the state to set realistic timetables for litigating capital cases so families are not revictimized by decades of appeals...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on February 20, 2009 (boomark / email).