During the State of the Union address last week, President Bush outlined an ambitious plan to improve training for defense lawyers who handle death penalty cases.

While some might characterize the president’s idea as going soft on crime, we believe it’s a worthy effort to secure the protections afforded by the Constitution and our legal system.

“Soon I will send to Congress a proposal to fund special training for defense counsel in capital cases, because people on trial for their lives must have competent lawyers by their side,” President Bush said.

We support the initiative. But we also have a question: If a president, who is as pro-capital punishment as Bush, sees a system that is broken – so broken its mending begins during the State of the Union address and with new funding during a time of serious budget problems – would a moratorium on new death penalty cases not be appropriate?

President Bush said the system needs to be fixed so a person fighting for his or her life has a good defense team. We agree. So shouldn’t we stop – or at least slow – the machine until we make sure all the parts are working?

If not, then the president is saying that the system needs a big fix, but until the job is done, we’ll continue to put on trial and execute people who don’t have good lawyers. That’s a big contradiction, especially for the people fighting for their lives.