When you have a moment, read this article by Dahlia Lithwick about Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown. They're two mentally challenged adults who as teenagers in the early eighties were convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. McCollum especially has been cited again and again as a poster boy — as example of someone so loathesome that we need to have the death penalty so animals like him can be put to sleep forever. Justice Antonin Scalia often mentions him in that capacity…
…and now it turns out that McCollum and his friend Leon are almost certainly innocent. This is not to say that those who long ago made up their minds of the two gents' guilt will ever admit this. Also, Lithwick notes…
It never fails to astonish me that the same conservatives who argue that every last aspect of big government is irreparably broken and corrupt inevitably see a capital punishment system that is perfect and just. If you genuinely believe that the state can't even fix a pothole without self-dealing and corruption, how is it possible to imagine that police departments and prosecutors' offices are beyond suspicion, even though they are subject to immeasurable political pressure to wrap up cases, even when the evidence is shaky and ill-gotten, and even as there are other avenues that have gone unexplored?
Yeah. I really don't see how anyone can look at the justice system and have utter confidence in its conclusions. And I don't see how anyone can believe the government should be putting people to death because they might be guilty. Whether they should be doing this with people who are inarguably guilty is another topic of discussion.