Dahlia Lithwick on the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, the Texas man who was executed for arson. Experts now seem unanimous that the verdict was flawed and that Willingham was, as he insisted to his dying moment, an innocent man. But those who have a lot of emotion invested in the Death Penalty don't care…and if they continue to have their way, the prevailing attitude towards the wrongly-convicted will be: "Too bad. But you had your day in court and lost!"
I think it's enormously disingenuous for Justice Scalia and others to insist that no one has ever proven an innocent person has been put to death. The sheer number of wrongful convictions, including folks who would have been executed but for the relatively-new science of DNA testing, suggests there have probably been many. The trouble is that once the government executes someone, the people in that government have a compelling, almost desperate need to not allow innocence to be proven. So they make it darn near impossible.