The first step in a climb to higher political office is often the office of District Attorney. It casts the politician in the role of protecting the community, and few things are more effective in that regard than the successful prosecution of high profile crimes. At the same time, leaving such a crime unprosecuted, or failing to get a conviction is almost guaranteed to snuff out a budding political career in it’s infancy. This gives prosecutors a built in incentive to push on to get convictions against people they know are innocent, using whatever means it takes to do it. Therefore it should come as no surprise that there are so many innocents on death row.
However much Americans may disagree about the morality of capital punishment, no one wants to see an innocent person executed.
And yet, far too often, people end up on death row after being convicted of horrific crimes they did not commit. The lucky ones are exonerated while they are still alive — a macabre club that has grown to include 152 members since 1973.
The rest remain locked up for life in closet-size cells. Some die there of natural causes; in at least two documented cases, inmates who were almost certainly innocent were put to death.
How many more innocent people have met the same fate, or are awaiting it? That may never be known. But over the past 42 years, someone on death row has been exonerated, on average, every three months. According to one study, at least 4 percent of all death-row inmates in the United States have been wrongfully convicted. That is far more than often enough to conclude that the death penalty — besides being cruel, immoral, and ineffective at reducing crime — is so riddled with error that no civilized nation should tolerate its use.
Innocent people get convicted for many reasons, including bad lawyering, mistaken identifications and false confessions made under duress. But as advances in DNA analysis have accelerated the pace of exonerations, it has also become clear that prosecutorial misconduct is at the heart of an alarming number of these cases.
In the past year alone, nine people who had been sentenced to death were released — and in all but one case, prosecutors’ wrongdoing played a key role…
Inserted from <NY Times>
There are actually two problems that need to be addressed here. We must eliminate the incentive for prosecutorial misconduct. I would like to see it made a felony, with at least a five year prison term and automatic disbarment. More important, lets gat civilized! State sponsored murder costs tax payers far more than natural life. State sponsored murder does nothing to prevent other murders. State sponsored murder prevents its victims from reforming and leading productive, socially useful lives behind bars. I know it happens. A couple of the guys who assist me in my volunteer used to be on death row and are now serving natural life.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gave less than full-throated support to Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday, days ahead of Clinton’s expected entry into the 2016 presidential race that some Democrats to Clinton’s left want Warren to also join.