The execution of innocent people....
Glad to see you back, Solon. Here are my thoughts on the claim that innocent people have been executed.
I know nothing about the cases you cite in Canada, but my impression of the Canadian justice system is that it is excellent and trustworthy, so I would be very skeptical of such claims. I would rather suspect that what has happened in the U.S.A. has happened in Canada -- that death penalty opponents play fast and loose with the facts in asserting that it is a proven fact that innocent people have been put to death.
The very idea of "proving innocence" presents the same difficulties as proving any other negative. Being found "not guilty" in a court of law (as in a re-trial) does not prove innocence, nor is it legally claimed to do so. The fact that another person confesses to the crime at issue does not prove innocence, and in fact is a fairly common occurrence in the jailhouse culture. As powerful as DNA evidence may be, it is rarely if ever conclusive by itself in proving innocence (or guilt, for that matter). More commonly, "exculpatory" DNA evidence merely implicates another in the same crime, which is not the same as proving innocence of the person convicted.
Indeed, very few death row appeals are based upon a claim of innocence. The great majority of such appeals are based upon legal issues arising from the conviction -- what we usually call "technicalities."
Opponents of capital punishment in the U.S.A. toss around an assortment of numbers of those people either executed or sentenced to death row, who were later found to be "innocent." I have not seen one single instance of such an alleged case where innocence was "proven." I believe it would be extraordinarily difficult, probably impossible, to do so.
IMO, of the various arguments that can be raised against the death penalty, the "innocent person" claim is among the weakest.
JC |
