DEATH ROW EXONERATIONS IN PROPER PERSPECTIVE

Exonerations amount to an infinitesimal number when compared to the several thousand inmates who have occupied U.S. death rows during the 35 years since capital punishment was reinstated

Damon Thibodeaux has just been set free after DNA testing exonerated him of the rape-murder of his 14-year-old step-cousin. He has spent more than 15 years on Louisiana’s death row.

According to the New York-based Innocence Project, Thibodeaux became the 300th wrongly convicted person and 18th death row inmate exonerated in the U.S. through DNA testing. But hold your horses! The Innocence Project has inflated that 300 number. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, as of September 26 there have been 140 exonerations since 1973, including the 18 DNA ones.

Much has been made of the exonerations by those favoring abolition of capital punishment. In addition to the DNA exonerations, since 1973 there have been about 120 death row inmates who were deemed wrongfully convicted because of faulty evidence, faulty eyewitness identification, coerced confessions, inadequate or incompetent legal representation and prosecutorial misconduct.

Every time a death row inmate is exonerated, the death penalty abolitionists go apoplectic with their demands for an end to capital punishment. The attention given to these exonerations by the media would lead the public to believe that a lot of inmates on death row are innocent. However, when you look at the total number of inmates awaiting execution, nothing could be further from the truth. The total exonerations amount to an infinitesimal number when compared to the several thousand inmates who have occupied U.S. death rows during the 35 years since capital punishment was reinstated.

(On April 1, 2012, there were 3,170 condemned murderers on America’s death rows. There have been 1,307 executions since 1976.)

No one, including me, wants to see an innocent person convicted of a crime or wrongfully sentenced to death. But the fact that a number of persons have been exonerated after years on death row is no reason to abolish capital punishment. And, unfortunately, there have probably been a handful or so of persons executed that were innocent. Again, when you look at the brutality perpetrated by the murderers on death row, that too is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater by abolishing the death penalty.

Let me repeat something I wrote in an earlier post: The death penalty abolitionists would spare the life of some worthless subhuman piece of shit who raped a two-year-old girl, then butchered the toddler into pieces and disposed of the body parts in a garbage dump to cover up his despicable deed. I don’t know about you, but I believe that justice screams out for the execution of the perpetrator of such an unspeakable crime.