COLUMBUS — A study of Ohio's death-penalty law and the legal path that convictions follow could help ensure that courts do not overlook errors that could result in the execution of an innocent person, a professor who has studied capital cases nationwide said Tuesday.

        James Liebman testified before the House Criminal Justice Committee in favor of a bill that would set up a special commission of lawmakers, judges prosecutors, lawyers and others to study Ohio's law.

        Mr. Liebman, a professor at Columbia University for 17 years, said the sheer number of death-penalty cases means errors will occur. Of the 5,826 cases from 1973-95 that he reviewed, enough errors were committed in 68 percent of them that appeals courts reversed the convictions, he said.

        “We have very strong findings that suggest the more you use the death penalty, the more likely it is that any given verdict that you impose will turn out to be seriously flawed and will turn to have been imposed on somebody who is not guilty,” he said.

        Of the errors he was able to find, one-third involved incompetent defense lawyers, Mr. Liebman said. The second greatest category was prosecutors' suppression of information that suggested the defendant was innocent or where there were mitigating factors, he said.

        Hamilton County, where about one-fourth of the 200 men on Ohio's death row were convicted, ranked No.7 in the country for death-penalty convictions with about 40 death sentences per 1,000 homicides, according to Mr. Liebman's study. The national average was about 18 per 1,000 homicides.

        Attorney General Betty Montgomery said she likely won't support the study committee but hasn't decided whether to oppose it.

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