. . . that you meet someone who spent 17 years on death row and then was exonerated.
Over the weekend, I was in Spokane, Washington, to participate in the "Race and Criminal Justice in the West" conference at Gonzaga Law School, and I ended up chatting with Juan Melendez-Colon. Needless to say, it was a fascinating conversation.
Along the same lines, I heartily recommend False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent by former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro. This book recounts how Petro, a staunch Republican and prosecutor, became won over by the power and precision of DNA testing, to the point where he, as the sitting AG, was arguing with a local prosecutor about the latter's refusal to accept DNA results as exonerating a defendant whom she had prosecuted! These aren't death row cases, but the instances of innocent men who served ten or more years after their wrongful convictions is pretty powerful.
Speaking of exonerating evidence, it's worth pointing out that at least one SCOTUS Justice doesn't believe that it is the court's place to forbid the execution of a person who has been proven innocent after their trial has concluded: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2009/08/18/scotus
Needless to say, my view is different, and this adds to the reasons I oppose the death penalty in all cases.
Posted by: Matthew Lewis | September 26, 2011 at 01:50 PM