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Fatal Error
The State of the US Death-Penalty System
By Adina Yoffie

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In 1997, the state of Florida botched Pedro Medina’s execution. When the switch was flipped on the 50-year-old electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky," the mask covering Medina’s face caught on fire. Flames up to a foot long shot of his face for 6-10 seconds. A thick, black smoke filled the room, and the prison guards closed the curtain, hiding the rest of the job from the shocked witnesses. Bob Butterworth, then Florida’s attorney general, said that Medina’s agonizing death would be a deterrent to crime. People who want to commit murder, he said, better not do so in Florida because "we may have a problem with our electric chair."

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On Jan 31, 2000, Governor George Ryan (R-IL), a death-penalty proponent, announced a moratorium on executions in his state until the system is investigated. Governor Ryan had more than sufficient grounds to say that Illinois’s criminal-justice system is "fraught with error": Since 1977, when Illinois reinstated the death penalty (following a 1976 Supreme-Court ruling allowing states to do so), 12 prisoners have been executed, while 13 have been exonerated. The fact that so many have been exonerated in Illinois, as opposed to in the other 37 states that currently have the death penalty, has more to do with the work of journalism students at Northwestern University than with any effort the state has made to determine the actual guilt of its death-row prisoners. There is no telling how many more of the approximately 3,600 people awaiting execution are not guilty, but it is worth noting that 87 men have been freed from death row since 1977, with three already released this year.

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o A newly-released study of 62 inmates cleared by DNA evidence demonstrates that mistaken eyewitness testimony was involved in 84% of the wrongful convictions (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/16/00).

o The United States is the only Western democracy that still carries out executions. Since 1976, 41 other countries have abolished the death penalty.

o Of defendants sentenced to death in Illinois before the moratorium, at least 33 were represented by lawyers who have since been disbarred or suspended, and at least 38 were black defendants sentenced by all-white juries (The Chicago Tribune).
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Governor George W. Bush of Texas (where 463 people are on death row) maintains that he is certain that every person of the over 100 who have been executed during his tenure is guilty. The fact that Texas has no public-defender system and that Bush has spent much time over the past year campaigning outside the state has not made a dent in Bush’s certainty. For those who, regardless of their stance on the death penalty, would like to take the time to examine the evidence and aim for a higher standard, state and national moratoriums are presently the best course of action.

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http://www.princeton.edu/~progrev/99-00/n7_ay.html