Report: 4% of death row inmates likely innocent

[7,052,770]

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5228854/

Regardless of your feelings on the theoretical ethics of capital punishment,  we should all be able to agree that it's time for America to get rid of its current system. There's just no way to reasonably defend this...

[TDAS04]

Awful, but not surprising.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Disheartening.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Well, the study doesn't really look at the "current" system, since it doesn't include data for the past 10 years, but yes, I'd be in favor of changing the requirement to be that there must be DNA evidence to support a death penalty conviction.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Few fates can be more depressing than sitting innocently on death row because the state chooses to facilitate another's wrongful revenge. 

[Maxwell]

That's less than I thought, but still, that's depressing.

[Simfan34]

Few fates can be more depressing than sitting innocently on death row because the state chooses to facilitate another's wrongful revenge. 

I really don't know how it's justifiable rationally. I mean, except for perhaps acts of genocide or war crimes, I don't see how certainty can be achieved.

[Frodo]

That would be about enough for me to turn from being relatively indifferent to the death penalty to outright opposed to it.....   

[courts]

That would be about enough for me to turn from being relatively indifferent to the death penalty to outright opposed to it.....    

even if this is true (which is dubious) i'm sure much more innocent people are killed by the police during things like drug raids than by the death penalty. yet not a lot of people in the mainstream are calling for the police to be disarmed or disbanded.

[Frodo]

That would be about enough for me to turn from being relatively indifferent to the death penalty to outright opposed to it.....    

even if this is true (which is dubious) i'm sure much more innocent people are killed by the police during things like drug raids than by the death penalty. yet not a lot of people in the mainstream are calling for the police to be disarmed or disbanded.

How is it dubious?

[Adam Griffin]

That would be about enough for me to turn from being relatively indifferent to the death penalty to outright opposed to it.....    

even if this is true (which is dubious) i'm sure much more innocent people are killed by the police during things like drug raids than by the death penalty. yet not a lot of people in the mainstream are calling for the police to be disarmed or disbanded.

Because we can only do or advocate for one thing at a time.

[morgieb]

Basically this is what's wrong with the death penalty.

[Meursault]

Not that my views are remotely representative of the mainstream (and I likely would not hold to them if they were), but the police should, in fact, be disarmed and disbanded. The British Empire was the first society in history to create a centralized, continuous gendarmerie, and this only in the eighteenth century: it has been demonstrably a ineffectual - even counterproductive experiment - as has the 'classical' notion of the rule of law as a decontextualized, universalized process more generally.

[Likely Voter]

so to sum up, the death penalty..
...doesn't act as a deterrent
...costs more than life imprisonment
...sometimes creates cruel lingering deaths
...sometimes condemns the innocent
...puts the USA in the same group as countries like N. Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, S. Arabia, and China

Explain to me why we continue to have capital punishment?

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

It's a pretty strongly verified situation that capital murder cases have a higher error-rate than non-capital cases.

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

Regardless, the Death Penalty still has lower death rates than raids and still is justifiables morally despite the few mistakes that are made.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The death penalty is still barbaric.

[Beet]

That would be about enough for me to turn from being relatively indifferent to the death penalty to outright opposed to it.....    

even if this is true (which is dubious) i'm sure much more innocent people are killed by the police during things like drug raids than by the death penalty. yet not a lot of people in the mainstream are calling for the police to be disarmed or disbanded.

Because we can only do or advocate for one thing at a time.

Err... More likely it's because most people see a high cost to disarming of disbanding the police in a heavily armed society (such as making the police unable to enforce the law). That's a very high cost to put it mildly. On the other hand, most people will not see any cost if the US stops executions. In fact the taxpayers will save money...