Originally Posted by scoreman

Throughout the majority of my life I was for the death penalty. Those bastards deserve to die was my rationale. Eye for an eye and all that.

Then I went to work as a Public Defender right out of law school. I saw first hand how the justice system works here in the United States. From the misdemeanor level to Capital felony, I saw first hand how in many cases convictions were obtained through very questionable means. I have seen cops lie on the stand, I have seen jailhouse snitches who would say their mother did the crimes (even though she may have been in Antartica when the crime occurred) if they thought it would get them off. I have seen confessions obtained from borderline retarded defendants who were told after 12 hrs of interrogation that they would be sent home if they confessed. I have seen indentifications done where the cops showed them a defendants sitting in the back of a police car, handcuffed and asked "Is that the guy?". (later turned out to not be the guy even though the eyewitness claimed he was 100% sure) There are many people in prison right now who are innocent, I am 100% convinced on this.

Many of you might be familiar with the Innocence Project. For those not familiar let me bring them up as a case in point as to how flawed our system is. In 14 years of existence, the IP has exonerated 164 convicted and jailed persons, many of them who were on death row. Many spent as much as two or three decades jailed for crimes they did not commit. Ask yourself, if the system is so flawed that a small team of lawyers and law students can demonstrate the innoccence of 164 people in a short time period, how many people are currently awaiting execution that are innocent?

Anytime I see a conviction like Tookie Williams, where the evidence was circumstantial and he was largely convicted on the testimony of two criminal defendants who stood to benefit on their own sentences for their testimony, it raises my eyebrows. Combine that with the demonstrated history of actually doing good for the last ten years, so much good he was a multiple time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, well yeah I tend to think that maybe this was a good case for clemency. Not a pardon, just convert his sentence to life in prison.