This is why I’m not in favor of capital punishment.
A 56-year-old man who spent 25 years behind bars for a rape he says he didn’t commit walked out of court a free man on Friday after a judge recommended his aggravated rape conviction be overturned.
He becomes the 20th man in Dallas County proven innocent by DNA testing since 2001, although one of those men will be retried by prosecutors. Those 20 cases are a national high for one county, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center specializing in wrongful conviction cases.
Sometimes the prisoner really didn’t do it.
Not that I’m against killing the ones that need and deserve it, but all too often the wrong person is convicted.
I’m not in favor of capital punishment for the same reason that I’m not in favor of abortion: I don’t agree with the state condoning the taking of human life. Call it the slippery slope, but you have to draw a line somewhere. Every time that the state has said it’s okay to kill certain people, those that can’t defend themselves (the elderly, the infirm, the Mensheviks, the Jews) have found themselves “unpersons”.