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Thursday, February 03, 2000 Page: 12A
I was glad to see some counterpoint to the usual rhetoric concerning the
death penalty in your paper.
I would invite anyone reading this to go to any death row and see if there
are any rich people in there. Don’t try too hard, you won’t find any.
I would add that recently DNA evidence has been overturning a lot of cases,
but the legal system often disallows this defense.
Why? Because they are afraid how many tragic mistakes will be uncovered. In
states where cases are being opened, it is being reveled that large numbers of
the people locked up for crimes did not commit them, and that includes death
row inmates.
In some ways, the American justice system is no different from many Third
World countries in that people are convicted on very scant evidence, and
sometimes on political grounds more than factual. Any cursory examination of
our legal system would reveal this, but people are still clinging to the
notion that the system is fair.
Mark Swantkowski
Mehoopany