Despite 41 DNA Exonerations In Texas In Last 9 Years, Perry Says He Never Loses Sleep Over Executing [View All]

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drrrrr.....

Despite 41 DNA Exonerations In Texas In Last 9 Years, Perry Says He Never Loses Sleep Over Executing The Innocent

At last night’s GOP presidential debate in California, front runner Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) defended his record of overseeing 235 executions in Texas, the most of any modern governor by far and nearly half of those conducted in the state since the death penalty went into effect in 1976.

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That’s despite the fact that during Perry’s tenure as governor, DNA evidence has exonerated at least 41 people convicted in Texas, Scott Horton writes in Harper’s. According to the Innocence Project, “more people have been freed through DNA testing in Texas than in any other state in the country, and these exonerations have revealed deep flaws in the state’s criminal justice system.” Some 85 percent of wrongful convictions in Texas, or 35 of the 41 cases, are due to mistaken eyewitness identifications.

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http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/08/314493/despite-41-dna-exonerations-in-texas-in-last-9-years-perry-says-he-never-loses-sleep-over-executing-the-innocent/