The death penalty has always been a very debatable subject
in most states – except Texas. It
seems that here there are more supporters of the death penalty than
not. I say this because we continue to elect state officials who support it. Our previous governor, Gov. George W.
Bush is one the death penalty’s biggest supporters, perhaps even more so than Gov. Rick Perry. An article written on Sept. 11, 2011 by Arlette Saenz of ABC News reports: “Under Perry, Texas has executed 235 people
over nearly 11 years – amounting to more than 21 people per
year. During Bush’s five-year tenure as governor, 152 people were executed in
Texas - more than 30 per year.”
Texas should ban executions.
According to an editorial written this week in the Dallas Morning News
titled: Salute
to Connecticut on death ban the writer explains that: “Eyewitnesses are
mistaken. Forensic evidence is misread or misinterpreted. Innocent people admit
things they didn’t do. Innocent people end up with bad lawyers and cut bad
deals. Innocent people go to death row.”
All of these statements are true and can easily be proven by researching actual cases of the wrongly convicted. Here are a couple of examples: Cameron Todd Willingham convicted of murder by arson was executed a few years ago. Based
on the evidence presented, people all over the world believe that he was
wrongly convicted and died an innocent man.
More recently, Kerry Max Cook was exonerated but is
still a marked man as explained in an article published in the Texas
Tribune by Michael Hall:
Cook’s situation is complex. His death sentence was twice overturned by higher courts, DNA taken from the victim’s underwear did not match his own, and the evidence used to convict him has been shown to be entirely fallacious — but because Cook pleaded no-contest to the murder on the eve of what would have been his fourth trial, he cannot be declared actually innocent.
Another startling statistic is that during the past 10 years there
has been over 40 prisoners exonerated due to DNA evidence. That is more than enough reason for me to believe
that we must ban state executions and reduce all of the current death row sentences
to life without parole.
A very small part of me deep down in my soul agrees with the death penalty
supporters and I can empathize with the victims' family and understand why the death penalty would be justifiable punishment
for victims of hateful, violent crimes.
What I do not understand is how death penalty supporters can sleep at
night when they know the criminal justice system is flawed and full of human
error and innocent people are being convicted on a regular basis. Based on the statistics, it is also HIGHLY likely
that innocent people have already been executed or will be in the future.
Hey, we all make mistakes right? I am sure that lawyers mix-up files, forensic
evidence is lost or misplaced from time to time or some other administrative
error occurs during criminal cases. In
the case of the death penalty, isn’t one mistake one too many?
I completely agree with Jackie Goff’s post “Guilty until proven innocent”. I think that people support death penalty more than they are against it because they believe that it might reduce crime and statistics show that is quite true as according to “Texas on the Brick” Texas is among the states with lowest crime rates. But there is another side to this story and without that we cannot prove how true that is. As we have lowest crime rates but we also have high execution rates. We learned in our class recently that the cost of keeping people in prisons is very costly so usually execution is the best option.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you that eyewitness or DNA test is not solely enough proof to prove someone guilty. Sometimes racial prejudice also plays an important role in the process of proving someone guilty. There is also a possibility that when something bad happens to someone, that person might not be in his/her senses (state of shock) and she/he might recognize a person as guilty, who is not actually guilty. As I learned in my psychology class last semester that how a white women was raped by a black man, she recognized a wrong person as culprit because of some similar features but after a decade or so later she remembers it and proves him innocent but I don’t think it was worth it, as he spend almost half of his life in prison without any crime.
Now the question is should Texas ban executions? I don’t know what the answer to that is but I do think the procedure through someone is proven guilty needs to be change. Every step along the way should be double check to make sure that a wrong person is not being convicted and the court should require more than one type of evidences before proving someone innocent or guilty.