Open Letter to South Korean President Yoon on Abolition of the Death Penalty
Witness to Innocence has joined the Transnational Justice Working Group and other international partners among the World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in a Joint Open Letter calling for abolition of the death penalty in South Korea. Among the many reasons for abolition cited, the letter says the following about innocence and the death penalty:
"It is important to note that no criminal justice system is perfect. The police, prosecutors and judges failed to prevent miscarriage of justice in the cases such as the murder of a taxi driver at the Yakchon five-way crossing in Iksan and the eighth of the ten Hwaseong serial murders. While an exonerated person can always be released from prison, bringing him or her from death is impossible. If it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer, as Blackstone famously said, it must indeed be better that ten guilty persons escape the death penalty than that one innocent suffer the deprivation of life."