Death penalty system fatally flawed



By Sam Millsap - Express-News
December 12, 2008
According to a report released last week by the Texas Coalition to 
Abolish the Death Penalty — Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2008: 
The Year in Review — this year Texas juries condemned the fewest 
number of people to death in more than 30 years.

As of Dec. 10, a total of 10 people (nine men and one woman) had been 
sentenced to death in Texas in 2008.

Perhaps this reflects the public's growing uneasiness with the death 
penalty or prosecutors' recognition that the costs of the ultimate 
punishment — both human and financial — are too high. Or perhaps my 
fellow Texans have come to share my realization that a fallible 
system that puts people to death simply cannot be trusted.

Evidence of misplaced trust in the death penalty system was on stark 
display on Aug. 25, when a Collin County court dismissed all charges 
against death row inmate Michael Blair for the 1993 rape and murder 
of 7-year-old Ashley Estell.

After the results of new DNA testing failed to connect him to the 
crime, those involved in the case agreed that there was not enough 
evidence to uphold the conviction. Blair had spent 14 years on death 
row. Michael Blair was the fourth person exonerated from death row 
nationally in 2008 and the 130th overall since 1973, according to the 
Death Penalty Information Center.

DNA played a role in just 17 of these cases. Blair is the ninth 
person exonerated from death row in Texas.

Such willingness to admit a mistake has come too late for several 
inmates who claimed to be innocent of the crimes for which they were 
executed.

In an interesting turn of events, the Texas Forensic Science 
Commission agreed this past August to a request from the Innocence 
Project to investigate the possibility of misconduct in the arson 
case of Cameron Todd Willingham.

Willingham was convicted in 1991 of setting a fire that killed his 
three daughters; he was executed by the State of Texas in 2004. 
According to the Innocence Project, a panel of leading experts later 
determined that the fire was not arson and that forensic experts at 
the time of Willingham's trial should have known that the fire was an 
accident. The commission will investigate the faulty forensic 
analysis used to convict Willingham.

Similar analysis was used in 2004 to exonerate Ernest Ray Willis, who 
had spent 17 years on Texas' death row for a crime that did not 
occur. Should the results of this investigation rule out arson, it 
will further undermine the credibility and integrity of the Texas 
death penalty system — though clearly too late to benefit Mr. 
Willingham.

In another Texas case, that of Carlos De Luna, a documentary film 
released earlier this year continued to call into question his guilt. 
“At the Death House Door” is based on an in-depth inquiry by 
journalists with the Chicago Tribune. To date, no official 
investigation has taken place, although strong evidence points to 
another suspect in the crime (now deceased) for which De Luna was 
executed 19 years ago.

We cannot sanction a death penalty system that gets it right most of 
the time. An honest assessment of the problems associated with the 
death penalty is long overdue.

I urge Texas lawmakers to consider the cases of Cameron Todd 
Willingham, Carlos De Luna, Michael Blair, Ernest Ray Willis and 
others when they reconvene in January and to recognize the ultimate 
fallibility of a system that no longer deserves our trust... or our 
support.

When it comes to human life, a system that gets it right most of the 
time should not exist at all.

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