UNTITLED ON PURPOSE

A recent broadcast I just hear on NPR tells the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man who was executed for an arson that killed his family. The thing is, recent evidence shows that he was most probably innocent. In fact, he was convicted solely on the testimony of a forensic investigator which was shown to be full of junk science and false assumptions. This information was submitted to the governor while he was still on death row yet was not investigated.

At best this can be seen as an extremely unfortunate occurrence but one that cannot justify the abolition of capital punishment as an effective means of delivering justice and preventing future crimes. Or, one may say, that this is a horrible miscarriage of justice carried out by the Texas judicial system and a thorough investigation should take place on this isolated case and bring the negligible parties to justice.

But the thing is, this isn't a freak occurrence.

According to an article published by The American Bar Association states that in the past four years alone 17 death row inmates have been found innocent and released. If there are that many that are fortunate enough to have outside assistance in finding new evidence that vindicates their false convictions, exonerates them and saves their lives then how many more didn't get that treatment and ended up being executed for crimes they did not commit.

How many innocent people have to be murdered by the government in order to abolish capital punishment nationwide? In my opinion, the possibility of a single person suffering this fate is enough to ban this barbaric practice. I'm not saying that there aren't people who commit crimes great enough that I would want them dead. Surely if someone tortured and killed my family I would personally want them to suffer for a long time and know they they will be killed by my own hands. That being said, we cannot go through with these urges whether they be administered by vigilantes or state sanctioned executioners. There is just no way to know for sure that the people we are prosecuting, convicting and sentencing to death are actually guilty. Every American has the "right" to a "fair" trial but, there are no agents within the judicial system that actually try to find out the truth of what happened. There is the defense attorney who tries to get defendant off the hook and the prosecutor who tries to convict them. Neither of them is trying to find out what actually happened.

Fortunately for Cameron Todd Willingham, there were people outside the trial that tried to find out the truth but, unfortunately they were a little too late.

GET SMART, PEOPLE!