Nebraska's Lincoln Journal Star carries the editorial, "Too fallible for death penalty."
The case of the crooked crime scene investigator in Douglas County provides another glaring example of why the criminal justice system cannot be trusted to apply the death penalty.
Humans not only make honest mistakes, sometimes they plant evidence and lie.
The conviction of former CSI chief David Kofoed for tampering with the evidence in a double murder case was upheld earlier this month by the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Kofoed was convicted for planting a speck of blood in a car belonging to a suspect in the case. His bogus evidence resulted in two innocent men being held in jail for several months. Police even wrung a false confession out of one of them.
Fortunately for the two men, the case against them unraveled before they were tried. DNA evidence found on a ring and marijuana pipe found in the home belonged to a pair of Wisconsin teens. They later pleaded guilty to killing a Murdock couple while looking for money during a road trip.
If you think the Kofoed case is one of a kind, think again.
Just do an Internet search for “crime lab scandal.”
You will be -- or should be -- appalled at the number of times that crime labs turn out to be providing inaccurate and phony evidence.
And:
The fallibility of the criminal justice system has been demonstrated again and again. Innocent people have been executed in the past and will be in the future. If you don’t want blood on your hands, support repeal of the death penalty.
"End death penalty, says judge," is the San Francisco Chronicle OpEd by LaDoris H. Cordell, a retired Santa Clara County Superior Court judge.
After nearly 19 years presiding as a state court judge in Santa Clara County, I am certain that the SAFE California initiative to replace the death penalty with life without parole will pass in November.
Yes, there have been failed efforts to end the death penalty.
This time it is different because it's about our safety. Californians are facing a serious public safety gap. A shocking 46 percent of murders and 56 percent of rapes in California are unsolved. This means that murderers and rapists are on our streets because the money to pay for investigations to apprehend them is not there - it's in death row. Once we pass the SAFE California Act, we can fund investigations.
Public opinion has shifted, too. When offered a choice between the death penalty and permanent imprisonment, all recent polls show majority preference for life in prison without parole. The failed promise of the death penalty is now obvious to all. Death penalty cases in California take an average of 25 years from conviction to execution. A quarter of a century is not justice for the families of murder victims. It is agony, insulting and unacceptable.
The Arizona Republic publishes the OpEd, "Sentence must be fair," by Larry A. Hammond. He's chair of the Arizona Justice Project.
Across the country, the death penalty remains very much in the news. Connecticut has just become the 17th state to abolish it. California soon will see a statewide referendum on this issue.
In Arizona we have seen no evident appetite to end capital punishment. To the contrary, the pace of executions seems to be increasing. But underlying what is happening here and what we can see across the country is a growing concern about whether we as a society are prepared to assure that the indigent accused are provided with competent counsel and the resources for an appropriate legal defense.
That concern is well worth examining. Why? Almost every politician, judge and commentator seems to agree that it is essential to provide good counsel at every stage of death-penalty cases. Nobody wants a system where those who are executed turn out to be those who did not have decent, competent lawyers.
Unfortunately, that is the system we have in Arizona, and it is this reality that has caused decision makers in other states to abandon the death penalty. We cannot pretend that those on death row have had and have today the lawyers we all believe they should have. The United States Supreme Court this spring has taken at least one step to do something about this. In a case from Arizona, Martinez vs. Ryan, the Court ruled by a 7-2 majority not to close the federal courthouse door to claims that a convicted defendant was denied effective assistance. This is good news in Maricopa County.
Earlier coverage from Arizona, California, and Nebraska begins at the links.
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