Innocent people have been executed. Execution is more expensive than life in prison. [View all]

[redqueen]

These are facts.

Bloodlust and the desire for vengeance which often fuels it are powerful motivators, but they do not negate facts.

Exonerated After Execution: 12 Men (And One Woman) Found Innocent After Being Put to Death
http://madamenoire.com/73840/exonerated-after-execution-12-men-and-one-woman-found-innocent-after-being-put-to-death/

The execution of Troy Davis in Georgia last week despite tremendous doubt about his guilt has brought the issue of capital punishment into the national spotlight. As a country that supports use of the death penalty, America is in poor company with “the world’s great dictatorships and autocracies [such as] Iran, Zimbabwe, China, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Cuba, [and] Belarus” according to The Atlantic — while we are supposed to be the land of the free. Far above and beyond the politically nasty associations with capital punishment is of course the moral concern over accidentally putting innocent people to death. It is likely that the average American believes this is a rare occurrence worth the social value of the death penalty as a deterrent from violent crime. Unfortunately innocent people are often placed on death row.

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Signs Grow of Innocent People Being Executed, Judge Says
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/12/national/12DEAT.html

Afederal judge in Boston said yesterday that there was mounting evidence innocent people were being executed. But he declined to rule the death penalty unconstitutional.

"In the past decade, substantial evidence has emerged to demonstrate that innocent individuals are sentenced to death, and undoubtedly executed, much more often than previously understood," the judge, Mark L. Wolf of Federal District Court in Boston, wrote in a decision allowing a capital case to proceed to trial.

He cited the exonerations of more than 100 people on death row based on DNA and other evidence.

"The day may come," the judge said, "when a court properly can and should declare the ultimate sanction to be unconstitutional in all cases. However, that day has not yet come."

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Innocence and the Death Penalty
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty

The most recent exoneree is Damon Thibodeaux (No. 141) of Louisiana in 2012.

List of Exonerees Since 1973 (including criteria for inclusion on List)

Innocence Database Searchable database of all exonerations since 1973--allows you to search and sort for cases by year, state, race, and other variables.

Descriptions of Each Exoneration By Year of Inmate's Release:

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This country uses the death penalty disproportionately against minorities and the poor.


When will it be enough? IMO this needs to stop, now.