As readers of this weblog know, one of my pet issues is how dysfunctional our court system is, especially with regard to crimes for which people receive the Death Penalty. I go back and forth on whether the Death Penalty is just, moral or even a good idea…but I do not waver on the belief that if we do have a Death Penalty, we should only be executing people who are definitely guilty. And I'm amazed how to some people, that seems to be a relatively-unimportant, even bothersome technicality.
I think there are some folks in this nation who really like the idea of the government putting Bad Guys to death. They like it so much that they don't want to hear that some of those Bad Guys might be innocent, lest that revelation make Capital Punishment less popular. How else to explain situations like that of a man named Darnell Williams?
Here's an op-ed piece by a lawyer who is upset that the state (Indiana, in this case) will not allow DNA testing that might prove that Williams, who is soon to be excuted, is innocent. You would think that would be a reasonable request. Does anyone really benefit if an innocent man is executed? You'd think people would want that, if only because it means the guilty party pulls off The Perfect Crime and gets away with murder. But the execution is still planned and the DNA test isn't.
And no, the lawyer who wrote this op-ed piece is not Darnell Williams' lawyer. He's the lawyer who prosecuted and convicted Darnell Williams. Even he thinks Williams may be innocent of the killings…