As many as 300 people who have been sentenced to death in the last 3 decades were most likely innocent. Many of the death row inmates were probably falsely convicted. "Our research adds the disturbing news that most innocent defendants who have been sentenced to death have not been exonerated." There have been 7,482 U.S. death sentence convictions between the years 1973 and 2004. Only 117 of these have been exonerated in the past couple of years. The groups who protest the death penalty and help fight for inmates are to thank for this. It is estimated that about 4 percent of those sentenced to death were actually innocent. Because there are fewer legal resources given to the cases of those who are sentenced to life, they are less likely to be exonerated.Even though this study focused on those cases from 10 years ago, the statistics are believed to still be accurate regarding today's cases.The study does not say exactly how many innocent people were put to death.
This is very interesting to me. I cannot believe knowing you are going to die while at the same time knowing you are also innocent, and shouldn't be dying. It is also awful that even though these people are assumed to be guilty and put to death, they don't have the same resources or the same chance to get their lives back.
http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-us-inmates-sentenced-death-innocent-researchers-050212172.html
Another evil of the death penalty.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad that the number of innocent inmates is so high. Hopefully the court/legal system finds a way to stop wrongly convicting people soon.
ReplyDeleteI agree that if people just assume one is guilty, they should not automatically kill them. You would think people would want to get the facts straight before sentencing an innocent person to death.
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