It’s inevitable that an innocent person will be executed

[AmyStrange]

It’s inevitable that an innocent person will be executed
BY Leonard Pitts

FROM: http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060123/OPINION/60123021/1005
MIAMI — So he’s guilty as charged. Never mind the timeline that some thought made it almost impossible for him to have committed the crime. Never mind the book casting doubt on his culpability. Never mind his death chair declaration: “An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight.”

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It is telling, though, that Virginia resisted for years allowing the sophisticated DNA testing, unavailable during Coleman’s lifetime, that conclusively proved his guilt. This, even though a coalition of newspapers and an anti-death penalty group offered to pick up the tab. The state fought them all of the way to its Supreme Court. After the court ruled in Virginia’s favor and the coalition asked Gov. Mark Warner to authorize testing on his own authority, he dithered for four years before finally giving approval. Point being, Virginia’s reluctance to allow the test suggests the state had less than maximum confidence in its outcome. Would you resist something you knew would prove you right?

While I can commiserate with those who worked on Coleman’s behalf and feel personally betrayed by him, the larger community of death penalty opponents has as little reason to feel chagrined by these results as death penalty advocates have to celebrate them. The inevitable has only been forestalled, not denied. Since 1973, more than 120 people have been released from death row after being proven wrongly convicted. How can we believe a system conceived by human beings can work without flaw? Or that all mistakes are caught before it is too late?

Not a chance. Someone will die — probably already has — because of a lying cop, a bad lawyer, a mean judge, a botched investigation. But most of all because some of us prefer to close our eyes to the obvious, be narcotized by denial, sleep in the unearned assurance that the system works for everybody, always.

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Leonard Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, can be reached at [e-mail].

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