Although strong evidence exists that some were innocent, no State is ready to allocate any funds to launch investigations that would prove that they immorally and erroneously executed innocents.
The only other source of funding is private (mostly University Law Departments)... and they are rightly allocating their small war chests on stopping the living innocents from being executed now.
In point-of-fact the system is broken and has always been broken. Of the more than 45 former Death Row inmates proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be innocent and thus released as free men in the past 38 months, all would have been executed by now except for the extraordinary intercession of private citizens who battled the State systems to prove each individual's innocence.
I stand by what I say: If I were to stand trial for a murder I did not commit, facing an aggressive, politically motivated prosecutor, being defended by a court-appointed attorney, and fighting circumstantial evidence which made me a suspect, I can almost guarantee you I would not only be convicted, but sentenced to death.
I am fiercely independent, anti-authority and extremely sarcastic. I would sneer at the jury and laugh aloud at the judge. I would unsuccessfully hide my snickers at the descriptions of the murder. I would refuse to take the stand and read a statement aloud that, in my esteemed opinion, the proceedings were a farce, the jury was composed of a group of society's losers, and the judge was a learned ass.
Now, don't you think I would be convicted and sentenced to die? Yet... I would be entirely innocent of the crime they would be punishing me for... |
