Who is the person who was executed who was innocent?
Well Todd Willingham comes to mind.
That said I’m not necessarily opposed to the death penalty. In principle I’m certainly for it.
My concern after ten years as a prosecutor and defense attorney is the danger of an innocent person being executed. For that matter I don’t care for the innocent being put in prison either.
If you are interested there is a very good documentary called “An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story”.
He was imprisoned for over 24 years for the murder of his wife. The trouble was that the DA held back serious exculpatory evidence from the defense.
After years of help from the Innocence Project and obstruction by the DA he was exonerated by DNA evidence. The IP also solved the murder of his wife in the process.
So Mr. Morton lost his wife, his child (obviously reasons), and a huge chunk of his life because of a malicious prosecutor. Personally I can’t imagine going through such a thing.
Morton is a strong Christian and has a very good attitude despite all this.
He made a chilling remark the Texas Supreme Court (during a very unusual Court of Inquiry at the time of his official exoneration) about how he was glad it wasn’t a capital case.
Just some information for you in case you didn’t know.
The Willingham story is quite lengthy too, but he’s already dead so that story isn’t getting much attention.