Many death penalty opponents believe that once it is undisputedly established that an innocent person has been executed, the ground swell of public opinion will be such that the death penalty will be abolished. I used to subscribe to the same notion, and while admittedly the rash of wrongful convictions disclosed in recent years has contributed significantly to a national draw down of support for the death penalty, I no longer believe the execution of an innocent person is the proverbial “silver bullet” that will slay the death penalty monster. There have simply been too many wrongful conviction tragedies to muster sufficient collective anger and indignation to defeat the powerful evil forces of the death penalty.

            The New York Innocence Project released its annual report about exonerations for 2009. The report revealed that twelve states wrongfully convicted 27 people who spent a total of 421 years in prisons for crimes they did not commit. Were these injustices tragic? Yes. Am I angry and shocked? Somewhat – but mostly I have come to accept injustice as par for the course in our criminal justice system. I was in a recent discussion with my brother-in-law about terrorism. He expressed the view that if America held 24 suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay and it was subsequently established that only ten of them were actually guilty of any terrorism activities, then confining the 14 innocent suspects was a “necessary evil” to protect the country from the ten guilty suspects.

            So what would my brother-in-law say about the 27 exonerations established in 2009? First, he would say that it was a “tragic” and “bad thing” to have happened before he would qualify those feelings by pointing out that these wrongful convictions occurred over a period of three decades—a period during which the criminal justice system properly convicted, and, yes, executed, thousands of deserving individuals; that no one can expect a justice dispensing system to work perfectly 100 percent of the time; that mistakes are inevitable. He would probably wrap up these sentiments by saying that while these 27 individuals were wrongfully convicted of the crimes for which they had been charged, they probably had committed scores of other crimes for which they had not been charged; that the system just “caught up with them in the end.”

            Keith Findley is President of the Innocence Network, Co-Director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, and Clinical Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Professor Findley knows a thing or two about wrongful convictions and the infallibility of our criminal justice system. He spoke to the issue of the 27 exonerations in 2009: “Every one of these cases had ripple effects well beyond the innocent who was in prison. Entire families are forever changed when a loved one is wrongfully convicted, and victims of crime are poorly served when true perpetrators evade justice. We need to learn from these cases and prevent wrongful convictions from happening in the first place.”

            I’m afraid these noble sentiments would not have much of an impression on my brother-in-law. He would counter Professor Findley by saying wrongful convictions are a necessary price of doing justice’s business. He expressed the view to me that killing innocent women and children are inevitable collateral damage in our “war on terror.” He said a four-year-old with a bomb should be shot down like a dog because the child is as dangerous as an adult suicide bomber.

            My brother-in-law is heartland America. So, at the end of the day, I really don’t think the execution of an innocent person would be so repulsive to him that he would stop supporting the death penalty. I really hate to debate these kinds of political and social issues with my brother-in-law. I always leave the discourse depressed, fighting off the inviting temptation to succumb to the nihilistic view that hope for mankind is futile.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/2302.php#