It’s a problem that nobody likes to talk about (The Innocence Project and the ACLU (both of which do a great job) refuse to even touch this issue). Legislatures and governors refuse to do anything about this issue and courts are powerless to do anything about this.

I suppose the reason why I focus so much on the death penalty is because death is irreversible. Sure, I realize the wrongfully convicted can never get their lost time back but I do believe that generous compensation by the state would help and hopefully lead to fewer wrongful convictions.

I would also like to point out that sometimes interrogators use the threat of the death penalty to coerce confessions from people – even false confessions. I recently watched a “Frontline” documentary about this one case were some 8 (I think it was 8) men were falsely convicted for a rape and murder. After many hours of interrogation, most of them cracked. The prosecutor would say things like “if you don’t confess, and you are convicted, you will get the death penalty…if you cooperate, we will take the death penalty off the table.” It was a very fascinating documentary to be sure…hopefully I’ll get around to writing about this case sometime.

But yes, even one day of someone doing time for a crime s/he did not commit is too long.