‘Did Texas execute an innocent man?’
The most important prison story of the decade:
The fear that an innocent person might be executed has long haunted jurors and lawyers and judges. During America’s Colonial period, dozens of crimes were punishable by death, including horse thievery, blasphemy, “man-stealing,” and highway robbery. After independence, the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty was gradually reduced, but doubts persisted over whether legal procedures were sufficient to prevent an innocent person from being executed. In 1868, John Stuart Mill made one of the most eloquent defenses of capital punishment, arguing that executing a murderer did not display a wanton disregard for life but, rather, proof of its value. “We show, on the contrary, most emphatically our regard for it by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself,” he said. For Mill, there was one counterargument that carried weight—“that if by an error of justice an innocent person is put to death, the mistake can never be corrected.”
More at HuffPo and in an editorial at the NYT.
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If you have studied the wrongful conviction realm as long and deeply as I have, it is impossible to believe that all innocent inmates have escaped execution by state governments. I say this not from an anti-death penalty perspective, but rather from a basic calculation of odds. I will be dealing with this controversy–and other controversies related to wrongful convictions–at my True/Slant site called “In Justice.”