April 2021When intellectuals talk about the death penalty, they talk aboutthings like whether it's permissible for the state to take someone'slife, whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent, and whethermore death sentences are given to some groups than others. But inpractice the debate about the death penalty is not about whetherit's ok to kill murderers. It's about whether it's ok to killinnocent people, because at least 4% of people on death row areinnocent.When I was a kid I imagined that it was unusual for people to beconvicted of crimes they hadn't committed, and that in murder casesespecially this must be very rare. Far from it. Now, thanks toorganizations like theInnocence Project,we see a constant streamof stories about murder convictions being overturned after newevidence emerges. Sometimes the police and prosecutors were justvery sloppy. Sometimes they were crooked, and knew full well theywere convicting an innocent person.Kenneth Adams and three other men spent 18 years in prison on amurder conviction. They were exonerated after DNA testing implicatedthree different men, two of whom later confessed. The police hadbeen told about the other men early in the investigation, but neverfollowed up the lead.Keith Harward spent 33 years in prison on a murder conviction. Hewas convicted because "experts" said his teeth matched photos ofbite marks on one victim. He was exonerated after DNA testing showedthe murder had been committed by another man, Jerry Crotty.Ricky Jackson and two other men spent 39 years in prison after beingconvicted of murder on the testimony of a 12 year old boy, who laterrecanted and said he'd been coerced by police. Multiple people haveconfirmed the boy was elsewhere at the time. The three men wereexonerated after the county prosecutor dropped the charges, saying"The state is conceding the obvious."Alfred Brown spent 12 years in prison on a murder conviction,including 10 years on death row. He was exonerated after it wasdiscovered that the assistant district attorney had concealed phonerecords proving he could not have committed the crimes.Glenn Ford spent 29 years on death row after having been convictedof murder. He was exonerated after new evidence proved he was noteven at the scene when the murder occurred. The attorneys assignedto represent him had never tried a jury case before.Cameron Willingham was actually executed in 2004 by lethal injection.The "expert" who testified that he deliberately set fire to hishouse has since been discredited. A re-examination of the caseordered by the state of Texas in 2009 concluded that "a finding ofarson could not be sustained."Rich Glossip has spent 20 years on death row after being convictedof murder on the testimony of the actual killer, who escaped witha life sentence in return for implicating him. In 2015 he camewithin minutes of execution before it emerged that Oklahoma hadbeen planning to kill him with an illegal combination of drugs.They still plan to go ahead with the execution, perhaps as soon asthis summer, despite new evidence exonerating him.I could go on. There are hundreds of similar cases. In Floridaalone, 29 death row prisoners have been exonerated so far.Far from being rare, wrongful murder convictions are very common.Police are under pressure to solve a crime that has gotten a lotof attention. When they find a suspect, they want to believe he'sguilty, and ignore or even destroy evidence suggesting otherwise.District attorneys want to be seen as effective and tough on crime,and in order to win convictions are willing to manipulate witnessesand withhold evidence. Court-appointed defense attorneys areoverworked and often incompetent. There's a ready supply of criminalswilling to give false testimony in return for a lighter sentence,suggestible witnesses who can be made to say whatever police want,and bogus "experts" eager to claim that science proves the defendantis guilty. And juries want to believe them, since otherwise someterrible crime remains unsolved.This circus of incompetence and dishonesty is the real issue withthe death penalty. We don't even reach the point where theoreticalquestions about the moral justification or effectiveness of capitalpunishment start to matter, because so many of the people sentencedto death are actually innocent. Whatever it means in theory, inpractice capital punishment means killing innocent people.Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Don Knight forreading drafts of this.Related:
