Innocent People Are Rarely Executed
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Posted: Jul 17, 2017 9:05 AM
Whether you agree with the death
penalty or not, it is a misnomer that many innocent people have been executed
in America in modern society. Instead, some people were executed where it was
discovered later that the prosecution made mistakes, someone else came forward
to dispute some of the evidence or similar. This resulted in a “wrongful
conviction,” which is not the same thing as being found innocent.
The Death Penalty Information
Center, which subtly opposes the death penalty, admits,
“There is no way to tell how many of the more than 1,450 people executed since
1976 may also have been innocent.” The site identifies 13 cases after 1976
where exculpatory evidence emerged after someone was executed. However, none of
the evidence necessarily proves that the 13 men profiled were innocent. Barbara
O'Brien of Michigan State University College of Law, the co-author of a 2014
study which claimed that 4.1 percent of those sentenced to death are innocent,
admitted the study was merely “a scientific estimate of the rate of
innocence” (emphasis added). An article in Newsweek observed
that the “study required some inventive math.”
A paper published by the National
Academy of Sciences about the same time acknowledges, “The rate
of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as
not merely unknown but unknowable. There is no systematic method to determine
the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not
occur in the first place.”
While it is disturbing that
exculpatory evidence has been discovered after someone was executed, it is
still not the same thing as proving they were innocent. Part of the problem is anti-death penalty
activists are so zealous they only provide part of the picture. They don’t
present you with the prosecution’s key evidence. Unfortunately, prosecutors are
so boxed in with legal ethical rules that they have little way of responding
and getting their side out. It doesn’t stop there. Death penalty opponents have
gone so far as to destroy
the career of a prosecutor — getting him wrongly disbarred over a death penalty
case — in order to keep up their ruse that there are numerous innocent people
being executed.
If anything, the legal system
errs on the side of letting someone guilty off the hook. Two-thirds of those
sentenced to death end up having the judgment overturned.
Defendants awaiting execution are eight times more likely to be exonerated than
other defendants, because their crimes and prosecutions are scrutinized so
closely.
This doesn’t negate the fact that
a few innocent people were wrongly executed during the earlier part of this
century, when technology wasn’t as advanced and racism was prevalent against
black defendants. The state of South Carolina pardoned
two innocent black men posthumously in 2009 who were wrongly executed. Thomas
and Meeks Griffin were electrocuted in 2015 for murdering a white Confederate
War veteran. It was discovered after their execution that the man who actually
committed the murder provided perjured testimony, blaming the Griffin brothers.
This also doesn’t negate the fact
that the death penalty can be unequally applied due to factors such as
co-defendants agreeing to testify against each other or accepting plea
agreements. In Arizona, Patrick Bearup sits
on death row for a murder he was not directly involved in. One of his
co-defendants, who actually shot the victim, took a plea deal for second degree
murder and avoided execution.
Perhaps the reason anti-death
penalty activists are so misleading on this topic is because questioning the
death penalty on other merits doesn’t get them very far. The death penalty acts
as a deterrent,
preventing future murders. When executions increase, murders go down.
Due to all the appeals, a death
penalty defendant spends a long time on death row and costs taxpayers more than
life imprisonment. It is true that life in prison is also pretty miserable. But
these are not key arguments in the death penalty debate. The death penalty’s
primary purpose is to deter future murders. Death penalty opponents
deliberately try to shift the focus away from deterrence, because it is the
most powerful argument in favor of it.
Opponents also try to discredit
studies showing that deterrence works. But no matter how they try to dress up
their argument with fancy statistics that can be doctored, does anyone really
believe that the possibility of execution doesn’t deter some people from
committing violent crimes? Don’t expect these zealous anti-death penalty
activists and the complicit left-wing media to track what happens to defendants
who are exonerated from the death penalty for “wrongful convictions.” If any of
them commit additional crimes, it won’t make front-page headlines on the fake
news.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2017/07/17/innocent-people-are-rarely-executed-n2355875
PLEASE GO TO THE FOLLOWING LINKS:
WHAT’S WRONG
WITH THE WRONGFUL CONVICTION MOVEMENT BY MARTIN PREIB
Crime Lab
Report
"Vindicated"
Former Death Row Inmate Actually Did It
CASEY ANTHONY
IS GUILTY!
EXONERATED 27
FROM THE U.S.A DEATH ROW - FROM INNOCENT TO GUILTY: JOSEPH GREEN BROWN
(MURDERED AGAIN & ARRESTED ON SEPTEMBER 14, 2012)
ATTORNEY WALTER JONES ON ANTHONY PORTER
CASE
WARD A. CAMPBELL: CRITIQUE OF DPIC
INNOCENCE LIST
http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/ward-campbell-critique-of-dpic.html
The Myth of
Innocence by Joshua Marquis
A MURDER IN THE
PARK (2014)
FALSE
CONFESSIONS BY DR. MICHAEL WELNER
INNOCENCE FRAUD
PROJECT:
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