Does capital punishment represent triumph of confidence over truth? The year was: 2000,
Frank Lee Smith is posthumously exonerated-he'd died 11 months earlier-14 years after being convicted of raping and murdering an 8 year old girl. The eyewitnesses were wrong. 2001:
Charles Fain is exonerated and set free 18 years after being sentenced to death for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a young girl. The scientific testimony was wrong. 2002:
Ray Krone is exonerated and set free 10 years after being sentenced to death for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a bar worker. The scientific testimony was wrong. 2003:
John Thompson is exonerated and set free 18 years after being sentenced to death for murder. The prosecutors hid exculpatory scientific evidence and the eyewitnesses were wrong.
2004: Ryan Matthews is exonerated and set free five years after being sentenced to death for killing a convenience store owner. The eyewitnesses were wrong. 2008: Kennedy Brewer is exonerated and set free seven years after being sentenced to death for killing his girl-friend's 3-year-old daughter. The scientific testimony was wrong. 2010: Anthony Graves is exonerated and set free 18 years after being sentenced to death for the murder of an entire family. The sole eyewitness-who was himself the murderer-lied.
I could make a much longer list.
The death penalty, a flimsy edifice erected on the shaky premise that we always get it right, that human systems always work as designed, that witnesses make no mistakes, that science is never fallible, that the cops never lie, that the lawyers are never incompetent.
Man, you have to believe that. You have to make yourself believe it. Otherwise, how do you sleep at night? So, of course, a prosecutor speaks confidence. What else is he going to speak? Truth? Truth is too big, too dangerous, too damning. Truth asks a simple question: In what field of endeavor have we always gotten it right? And you know the answer to that.
So truth is too pregnant for speaking. Better to avert your eyes and profess your confidence. But one day, too late for so many in Texas, truth will out. Godspeed that day the cards come tumbling down. What do you think my friends? Can I have some pros and some cons to this topic? Thank You & God Bless.
Rev. John.