“Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.”
– William Brennan, Jr., late U.S.
Supreme Court Justice
If the imposition of the death penalty is a disgrace to a nation that was founded on principles of justice, human rights and civil liberties, it is even more appalling when death sentences are handed out to those who are innocent. The American criminal justice system is failing to fulfill its highest duty: to protect innocent people from wrongful convictions and death sentences.
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Since the mid-1970s, 122 people have been exonerated and released from death row, innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted.*
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For every eight prisoners executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, one innocent person was condemned to die and later exonerated. How many equally blameless but less fortunate prisoners still await execution or have already gone to their deaths?
The American criminal justice system provides no reliable safeguards against this danger. Errors have been made repeatedly in death penalty cases because of:
- poor representation
- racial prejudice
- prosecutorial misconduct
- the presentation of erroneous evidence.
Once convicted, a death row prisoner faces enormous obstacles in convincing any court that he or she is innocent.
Death penalty supporters contend that the release of so many innocent people from death row is evidence that “the system works,” that it prevents irreversible mistakes from being made. Nothing could be further from the truth. When death row prisoners are exonerated, it is almost always due to extrajudicial factors such as the tireless work of dedicated attorneys or investigations by journalists, not the appeals process. Innocent people are freed from death row not because of the system, but in spite of it.
As long as the death penalty remains a part of the American “justice” system, innocent people will continue to be sentenced to death. Some will be executed. It is inevitable. Ultimately, the abolition of the death penalty is the only guaranteed protection against such tragic mistakes.
* Figures from The Death Penalty Information Center, through December 2005