`Repair or repeal'.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Two years ago, Illinois Gov. George Ryan halted all executions in his state after new evidence proved several death row inmates were innocent or were convicted in legally flawed proceedings. The governor appointed a blue-ribbon panel to research capital punishment and come up with recommendations to guarantee that no innocent defendant will ever be put to death.

The 14-member commission has now issued its report and concluded - unanimously - that the certainty Ryan demands is unattainable. "No system, given human nature and frailties, could ever be devised or constructed that would work perfectly and guarantee absolutely that no innocent person is ever again sentenced to death," the commission's report states.

Those are words that should resonate across the land, to death penalty friends and foes alike. The system cannot be made perfect. Innocent people will be put to death. If nothing else, that certainty should get the attention of the federal government and every state - including Oregon - in which capital punishment is allowed.

While the commission didn't call for an end to the death penalty - even though a majority of the commission's members thought it should - its message was clear: Reform the death penalty or repeal it.

The commission calls for 85 separate reforms of which all states, Oregon included, should take notice. Among them are paring down, from 20 to five, the circumstances in which the death penalty is applicable. The five remaining on the panel's list are: murder of more than one victim, killing a police officer or firefighter, killing an officer or inmate in a correctional institution, murdering to obstruct justice or torturing the victim. Among the other recommendations were: videotaping police interrogations, instituting a statewide DNA database and independent forensics laboratory, banning executions based on evidence from a single eyewitness, requiring judges to concur in death sentences by juries, asking a state board to review a prosecutor's decision to seek the death penalty and prohibiting the death penalty for mentally disabled defendants.

Death penalty proponents criticized the commission's report for seeming to contain "a fundamental distrust of police officers." That's a gross misreading of what the panel studied and found. It's not an anti-police report. It's a welcome attempt to underscore the fundamental flaws inherent in capital cases and to offer numerous ways to improve the system.

But in the end, the commission unwillingly and perhaps unwittingly headlined the many reasons capital punishment in the United States should be ended. Reform it or repeal it, the commission said. Reform, however, no matter how far reaching and carefully constructed, will still result in innocent people being put to death. "No system ... could ever be devised or constructed that would work perfectly ..." the commission said. The alternative, then, is obvious: Repeal capital punishment.