Sunday, July 22, 2007

One of the major reasons we should oppose the death penalty

From the NYT Select: (read it free with a .edu email)
In April, Jerry Miller, an Illinois man who served 24 years for a rape he did not commit, became the 200th American prisoner cleared by DNA evidence. His case, like the 199 others, represented a catastrophic failure of the criminal justice system.
...
Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia, has, for the first time, systematically examined the 200 cases, in which innocent people served an average of 12 years in prison. In each case, of course, the evidence used to convict them was at least flawed and often false — yet juries, trial judges and appellate courts failed to notice.
And people wonder why I'm against the death penalty...