ALI Disavows Its Death Penalty Framework
The American Law Institute has disavowed the model framework it developed in 1962 for administering the death penalty, citing flaws in the system.
The ALI decision last October was a compromise reached after some members asked the organization to take a stand against the death penalty, the New York Times reports. The group said it was disavowing its model “in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.”
A study commissioned by the institute found the system could not reconcile two goals: to make individualized decisions about who should receive the death penalty and to ensure fairness throughout the system. It also found racial disparities in capital punishment, underpaid and sometimes incompetent defense lawyers, and a risk of executing innocent people, the Times says.
