The Los Angeles Times is calling upon Congress to exorcise the 'Demon of Error' in death penalty cases and, for starters, pass the Innocence Protection Act, languishing in Congress for over a year.

Congress could start in this session by passing a long-ignored package of reforms to help ensure that only the guilty are condemned to death....

In separate investigations over the last four years, Chicago Tribune reporters and Northwestern University students and faculty members concluded that close to 200 Illinois inmates had been convicted of capital crimes on suspect evidence or represented by shoddy lawyers or could be exonerated with DNA evidence.

.... But even those who see the death penalty as fair retribution should be alarmed that it is applied unevenly, depending on the prosecutor's office, with too few safeguards against condemning the innocent.

The proposed Innocence Protection Act, supported by a number of groups on either side of the capital punishment issue, would raise the standards required of lawyers in death penalty cases and permit post-conviction DNA testing. Yet despite bipartisan support, the bill stalled after passing the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, and its fate in the new Congress may be bleaker.

This nation does have a problem with the death penalty, and it's time to start addressing it.

Three words: Innocence Protection Act. Now that the 108th Congress is in session, The Justice Projcet is getting ready for the reintroduction of the Innocence Protection Act (IPA) in the next few months. During the last Congress, the IPA gained support from more than half of the House of Representatives and was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Take a look back at the history of the IPA and get ready to help push it forward into law this year.