Legal Commentary

Maryland Considers the Risk of Wrongful Executions

By TChris

After Maryland failed to pass a bill that would have abolished capital punishment in that state, the state legislature created a commission to "study all aspects of capital punishment as currently and historically administered in the state" and to "make recommendations concerning the application and administration of capital punishment in the state so that they are free from bias and error and achieve fairness and accuracy." The commission has held four public hearings. The latest hearing focused on the risk of a wrongful conviction leading to a wrongful execution.

A member of the commission, Kirk Bloodsworth, has unusual insight into the problem of wrongful convictions. He spent 8 years in prison for a rape and murder he didn't commit. Also testifying was Michael Austin, who spent 27 years behind bars for murder before he was exonerated. [More ...]

Bloodsworth and Austin were freed because of advances in DNA technology, a fact that prompted two commission members to ask whether the better technology assures that no innocent person will be put to death. The answer is no.

"I couldn't disagree more," [Innocence Project director Barry] Scheck said. He warned that post-conviction DNA testing is "not a panacea" that can right all wrongful convictions.

Unfortunately, DNA is not available as evidence in every death penalty conviction. Some wrongful convictions are based on mistaken (or falsified) eyewitness testimony in the absence of physical evidence. Some are based on coerced confessions. And as we very likely saw in O.J.'s case, sometimes the police are tempted to plant blood evidence to bolster their own theory of guilt.

There's just no getting around the possibility that an innocent person will be convicted and put to death. That's why Maryland's former U.S. Senator Joseph Tydings, a former death penalty prosecutor, recently argued that the risk is too great, that the proper penalty for homicide should be a life sentence, not death.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 07, 2008 (boomark / email).