<p>Good job at not addressing the rape point…</p>
<p>And I think that previous argument is very radical. Anarchist, maybe? Anti-government hating is cool I guess. </p>
<p>It’s called society, bud. I don’t know why you would call a murderer or rapist “innocent”. And for those who are accidentally killed; it’s pretty rare.</p>
<p>About the website…it’s called opinion with proof. No one-liners.</p>
<p>Murderers and racists aren’t innocent, but people who aren’t guilty get the death penalty. It has happened before and it will happen again.</p>
<p>And it happens more than we realize. </p>
<p>Most people get the death penalty receive it because they proclaimed their innocence until the last moment. Those who admitted their guilt usually are given life.</p>
<p>And I’m not government hating. I’m Texas and Florida hating. States that use the DP a lot usually represent a low level of intelligence in the state.</p>
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<p>It’s not about the consequences of eliminating the death penalty, it’s about how some people believe everyone should have an opportunity to go up for parole.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Surely it would be easier and less expensive to minimize the number of people that are paroled without justification than to minimize the number of people unjustly executed. So far all you seem to be saying about the latter group is that you don’t care.</p></li>
<li><p>I, personally, would rather release a few people too soon that in most cases won’t kill anyone than execute an innocent person (= 100% death rate).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Just a note: I don’t think the death penalty should be used for all cases. My point is that it should still be an OPTION, since it has worked in the past.</p>
<p>What do you mean “it has worked”.</p>
<p>From the link B Man 22 posted. </p>
<p>“Given their objections to life sentences, if California or the federal government ever discards the death penalty, all the money that gets sucked into fueling bogus death-penalty appeals simply will move to bankroll anti-LWOP [life in prison without parole] appeals.”</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s evidence that’s true. One reason that in Florida, it costs the state an estimated $24 million to execute someone is that if a person gets the death penalty there, all of the person’s records back to conception need to be examined. Usually this is done by a defense lawyer paid for by the state. That’s a lot of paperwork, time, and consequently money.</p>
<p>Here is an example of the cases that led to the Illinois governor putting a moratorium on the executions there. I met one of the former journalism students who had helped gather the evidence to exonerate these men. She is now a reporter for NPR in Boston. She was given the case as a class project during the first week of her masters program in journalism. She had just moved to Illinois from California and never had done anything like this before. </p>
<p>She easily tracked down the main witness, and when she and her classmates knocked on the woman’s door and explained that they were there to find out about the murder case, the witness immediately confessed that she had been coerced by the police into lying about witnessing the crime. Later, the journalism student and another female journalism student got a confession from the incarcerated man who was the real murderer.</p>
<p>"In 1978, along with friends Dennis Williams and Willie Rainge, Kenneth Adams was convicted of gang-raping and murdering a twenty-three year old woman and murdering her fiance. The victims were abducted from a filling station close to where the male victim worked. The female victim was repeatedly raped in an abandoned townhouse in what is now Ford Heights and then both victims were shot and killed. </p>
<p>Adams was sentenced to seventy-five years in prison, Williams to death, and Rainge to life without parole. The main evidence in the case was the identification testimony of a witness who claimed she saw four men commit the crimes. The fourth man, Verneal Jimerson, was convicted and sent to death row. The four young men convicted for this crime were to become known as the Ford Heights Four.</p>
<p>Williams, Adams and Rainge were tried together in 1978, and represented by an attorney named Archie Weston. The state’s chief witness in the case, Paula Gray, claimed to have been at the scene of the crime with the four men. After her testimony secured indictments of all four men, she recanted and the charges against Jimerson were dropped.</p>
<p>During trial, the state presented eyewitness testimony placing Williams, Adams and Rainge near the scene of the crime at the time of the crime. There was a major timing inconsistency in this witness’ account, but Weston failed to point it out to the jury. A state expert testified improperly that a hair found in Williams’ car microscopically “matched” Williams’ hair, saying: “Just like if you drop two dollar bills and you see dollar bills on the floor. You see two one dollar bills. It’s obvious."</p>
<p>Microscopic hair comparison can never prove a conclusive match, but Weston failed to challenge this evidence. Hair evidence cannot be individualized based on microscopic analysis. Because there is not adequate empirical data on the frequency of various class characteristics in human hair, it is impossible to say definitively that strands of hair “matched” a particular person. There was also incorrect serology testimony in the case.</p>
<p>Williams won a new trial in 1985. Gray, who had been convicted as an accomplice and for perjury after her recantation, reverted to her original story and testified against Williams to gain her own release from prison. The charges against Jimerson were also refiled and both men were convicted and sentenced to death.</p>
<p>Archie Weston would later admit during a hearing in a different case that he was so stressed during the trial of Williams, Adams and Rainge that he couldn’t think striaght. He was disbarred for fraud committed in another case.</p>
<p>Adams’s appeals were denied, but Williams and Rainge won new trials and were convicted again based on both the eyewitness testimony and the perjured testimony that had convicted Jimerson.</p>
<p>With the help of David Protess, Rob Warden, and a team of journalism students from Northwestern University, the four men gained access to the evidence for DNA testing. They also discovered that the police had been tipped to the identity of the actual perpetrators, but did not pursue the lead. Eventually, DNA testing exonerated all four men and implicated three other men, two of whom confessed and pleaded guilty to the crimes in 1997.</p>
<p>The prosecution’s star witness later recanted her story, saying she made it up because she felt pressured and threatened by the police. The Ford Heights Four settled civil claims for $36 million against the police officers involved in the original investigation. Governor Jim Edgar granted pardons to all four men, who were released from prison in 1996."</p>
<p>[The</a> Innocence Project - Know the Cases: Browse Profiles:Kenneth Adams](<a href=“http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/46.php]The”>http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/46.php)</p>
<p>There are many people who have been exonerated due to the kind of corruption and incompetent lawyering described above. This is why I think that no one should get the death penalty: the risk that more innocent people will be put to death.</p>