http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...dants-innocent
"Deliberately conservative figure lays bare extent of possible miscarriages of justice suggesting that the innocence of more than 200 prisoners still in the system may never be recognised. At least 4.1% of all defendants sentenced to death in the US in the modern era are innocent, according to the first major study to attempt to calculate how often states get it wrong in their wielding of the ultimate punishment."
What do you guys make of this? Is it worth killing the innocent that fall through the cracks to kill the true criminals? Even without the death penalty, they still would have been falsely convicted and given life in prison but at least in that situation they have a chance to eventually be freed and given a settlement.
I personally would be for the death penalty if the U.S. judicial system wasn't a joke - unreliable verdicts and the death penalty ends up costing more than life in prison anyway due to all of the legal proceedings and bureaucracy. 4% is a ghastly amount of injustice. I was never really ever for or against the death penalty, but in light of this it is definitely now the latter.
Edit: Link to the actual study, http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/23/1306417111