"This should be a bigger deal in Perry's campaign," is the title of O. Ricardo Pimentel's column in today's San Antonio Express-News.
The average stay on Texas' death row is about 10 years.
Michael Morton spent 25 years in prison on a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit — another release due to DNA evidence.
Ten years. Twenty-five years. The difference tells us that, had Morton been tried on capital murder charges, he'd be dead. Like Cameron Todd Willingham.
Willingham spent about 12 years on death row. He was executed in 2004 in the arson deaths of his three daughters though the forensic evidence was shown, even before his execution, to be highly flawed.
What-might-have-tragically-been is not lost on Morton. “I thank God this wasn't a capital case,” he said after his release last week.
And:
Any accountability coming for the DA's office? I doubt it. But the case does demonstrate why the state and its governor should be held accountable for the death penalty, from which there is no recovery if wrongful conviction occurs, as in the Willingham case.
It's instructive that Texas' nation-leading error rate fails to sway no-sleepless-nights Perry in his role as the guy with the power to spare lives, as he had the opportunity to do with Willingham.
It's interesting also that the law-and-order guy Perry appointed to the forensic commission is a guy who apparently cared so little for truth that he obstinately stood in the way of testing evidence that released an innocent man. Interesting, but not surprising.
Earlier coverage of the Michael Morton case, the Todd Willingham case, and the Texas Forensic Science Commission begins at the link.
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