Is DNA the Key to Proving Innocence on Death Row?

[loseyourname]

“With great power comes great responsibility" -Winston Churchill

I always thought that quotation was from Spiderman.

Anyway, about the 1 in 6 death row inmates being released. I'm personally against the death penalty, but the above fact does not seem to me to be a good piece of evidence in support of that stance. We can easily interpret this to mean that all of the innocent people on death row are being released and not executed, in which case the system is working perfectly fine.

 

[vanesch]

In the figures cited above, 35% of those executed were black and 57% white.

I thought the death penalty in the US didn't apply to white people ?

(ok, this is a particularly nasty joke of bad taste, I agree)

More seriously now, I think the problem with the death penalty is not only its irreversibility (which, in the case of innocents, no matter how few, is dramatic). There are other reasons to be against it too. One of the reasons is the arbitrariness in which it is assigned. Even if all those on death row are guilty and "deserve to die" didn't quite a lot, with better lawyers, get away with life sentence, for equally horrible crimes ?
Another reason against the death penalty is that it means that certain criminals cannot be heard again for OTHER crimes. I've seen cases here in Europe where serial killers (who got caught long ago and did life sentence) suddenly resolved unexplained cases that were 15 years old or so.
That said, I can understand an exceptional application of the death penalty to particularly nasty criminals. But it should remain a very rare exception.

 

[BobG]

bottom line...i can argue both ways
Now agianst the death penalty:
“With great power comes great responsibility" -Winston Churchill
A system that decides whether a person lives or dies needs to be flawless. Since it is not power needs to be taken away from this system. It was mentioned before how a person is "garunteed an appeal" this can be misinterpreted...you see when a person is put on death row these 'appeals' are only to see if a fair trial was given...they review the format of the trial not the actual evidence...once a person is on death row the evidence is buried, and rarely, if ever, is brought up again. The death penalty needs to be aboloshed in America.

I like this argument. It almost sounds as if Winston Churchill, a person perceived as a great leader, is against the death penalty.

It also implies that the death penalty would be okay if the process were flawless. It implies that it should be banned because it hasn't met the same high standards as other systems involving life or death decisions. Of course, it ignores the fact that there is no such thing as a flawless human system. If imposition of the death penalty is held to the same standards as other human systems involving life and death decisions (when to remove life support, war, abortion, etc), the fact that mistakes will be made is just an accepted cost. In fact, it is - which is why appeals only review to ensure the defendant had a fair and adequate opportunity to present his side to the jury. Some trust has to be put into humans' ability to make decisions, even knowing those decisions will sometimes be wrong.

 

[chound]

How does DNA help in finding whether a person is innocent?