thomas leverett weblog

Missouri kills an innocent man

When DNA testing came out, a professor in Chicago turned his students loose on the 19 people on Illinois' Death Row, and said, use the new DNA testing to review these cases. It took a while, and the number of people on Death Row changed over the years. But within a few years 13 of them had been proven innocent.

This points out a big problem with our justice system. The jurors do the best they can; so do the police; everyone does their jobs. But big people at the top, who are often elected, have a vested interest in securing "justice" by making sure someone dies for every murder. If these 13 didn't kill the people they were charged with killing, who did? Well, somebody else, obviously, and it appears they got away with it.

It is pretty easy to force a confession. You just make someone suffer enough, and you make them believe thier life will be over now if they don't say what you want. You can even make them believe that their life is as good as over already, if they don't say what you want. So they said it. You got it on tape. And their life is as good as over.

That doesn't make it right. We're talking about poor, defenseless black men here for the most part, people who don't necessarily know at the moment that their defense attorney is worthless and not on their side. Or, they're unable to do anything about it.

Let's talk about Khalifah for just a minute. It didn't help that he became Muslim; that adds to the suspicion that what they really wanted to do was kill a Muslim. But he was a typical case in some ways. There was no credible evidence to convict him, outside of a forced confession. When the facts came in, his blood and DNA weren't on the scene. Everyone admitted that the defense attorney was worthless and/or not on his side. Even the families of the victims had asked that he not be killed. But high-up political people needed to prove they were tough. It doesn't matter that no evidence shows that capital punishment deters crime, either. It's posing.

So they kill an innocent man. They are no better than the people they rail on against in their campaigns.

posted by tom @ 7:00 AM