A couple of folks who read the previous posting have written to ask me what a rape case has to do with the Death Penalty since, after all, they usually don't sentence someone to die for the crime of rape.
I thought it was obvious but just in case others are wondering: A court system that could send an innocent man to prison for 25 years for rape or any other crime is a court system that could send an innocent man to the gas chamber. The Innocence Project, which is not the only group doing this kind of thing, has notched 232 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States since they began doing this in 1989. That includes seventeen who had served time on Death Row.
No one expects a Zero Defect System in our courts but I think a lot of folks have their heads in the sand over how often judges and juries put the wrong person behind bars. At the very least, there needs to be more willingness by officials to investigate and admit error. Jerry Johnson was telling people for years that he, not Timothy Cole, had committed the rape for which Cole was convicted. That's the kind of thing that can be fixed.