ABA asks Holden to suspend Missouri executions

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Gov. Bob Holden has no plans to impose a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty, despite a request from the president of the American Bar Association that he do so.

ABA president Alfred P. Carlton Jr. wrote to the governor last month asking that executions be suspended in Missouri pending a review of the state's laws and policies related to capital punishment.

Holden spokeswoman Mary Still on Tuesday said the governor didn't agree with the ABA's suggestion.

"Of course, everyone is aware of their position," Still said. "That is not the position of the state of Missouri."

In his letter, Carlton said the ABA has numerous concerns with the administration of the death penalty throughout the country. Such concerns prompted the ABA in 1997 to call for a national moratorium on executions.

"As it now stands, death penalty administration is a haphazard maze of inconsistent and unfair practices that actively increase the risk that innocent people will be executed," Carlton wrote. "No person should be at risk of a death sentence because of incompetent representation, prosecutorial abuse, racial bias, or other factors that produce unjust results in trials and sentencing. The disturbing number of wrongful convictions that have been uncovered around the nation underscores the importance of invoking a moratorium now, before irreversible error occurs."

According to the letter, 102 inmates sentenced to die have been exonerated nationwide in recent years.

Carlton sent similar letters to the governors and governors-elect of 32 other states that impose the death penalty, including Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee and Oklahoma, all of which border Missouri.

Illinois, which has freed more condemned prisoners than it has executed, became the first state to halt executions when Gov. George Ryan instituted a moratorium in 2000. Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening followed Ryan's lead earlier this year.

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon opposes a moratorium, said spokesman Scott Holste.

"He believes that the death penalty in Missouri is asked for sparingly by prosecutors and applied sparingly by jurors," Holste said. "When it is imposed, there are sufficient safeguards. He believes a a moratorium is not necessary."

There are currently 63 inmates on Missouri's death row. The state has executed 59 prisoners since it resumed carrying out death sentences in 1989.

mpowers@semissourian.com

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