Outdated cases No longer relevent in today's Debate
Most people are afraid to use the death penalty because they know that it is irreversible. If the death penalty is carried out, and new evidence comes to light which proves that the person just put to death turned out not to be the culprit, there is no way to bring him back. The results are final and if the wrong person is executed there is no way to fix that mistake. The thought of an innocent person getting wrongly executed scares people mostly because it has happened before, so that means it can happen again. This is what the people against the death penalty feed the public to instill fear and make the death penalty look bad. Yes people have been wrongly sentenced to death row and yes people have been wrongly executed before. However what they leave out is the fact that most of these cases happened almost three decades ago.
First I would like to go over the case of Helen Schartner. In 1985 Helen was raped and murdered on her way home while Joseph O’Dell was at the bar that night. O’Dell was seen leaving the bar around the time the murder occurred and appeared in a convenience store with blood on his hands face and clothes. According to him he got in a fight at the bar that night. After reading about Helen’s death, O’Dell’s girlfriend called the police and reported that O’Dell had left some bloody clothing in her garage. O’Dell was a “natural suspect” because he had spent most of his adult life in prison. While in prison he killed another inmate, but he claims it was in self defense.
This example proves how incredibly outdated and irrelevant these cases are today. O’Dell’s sentence with that lack of sufficient evidence would never hold up in today’s court system. Also in today’s world DNA testing is much more readily available, and much more precise than what it used to be. With it being more available we need to use it to its full potential. For anyone to be sentenced to death there must be sufficient forensic evidence to link the suspect to the crime. No more loose ends or assumptions, just cold hard facts. This way there will be absolutely no more false convictions, but more importantly no innocent people will be wrongly executed. |
At the time of the trial in 1986 DNA testing was not regularly available like it is today. Instead a more undeveloped and not very precise method was used to test the blood on O’Dell’s jacket. A state forensic technician used this technique and declared that the sample of blood from O’Dell’s jacket was “consistent” with Helen Schartner’s blood. Based off of these results, O’Dell was charged with Helen Schartner’s murder and arrested. I don’t know about you, but what this sounds like to me is the technician basically looked at the two samples and said “Yup that looks like blood to me. It must be a match. Arrest him.” Not exactly the most thorough investigation if you ask me. As a matter of fact DNA tests performed in 1990 proved that the blood from O’Dell’s shirt did not come from Schartner. Nevertheless the court rejected this information and O’Dell remained on death row. In 1997 O’Dell begged to have more DNA tests performed but the state refused his plea and he was executed, and all of the evidence was incinerated.
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Over the years there have been countless innocent people like O'Dell who were wrongly accused and executed. Here are a few of these cases provided by Likes.com. Note the dates of when these people were taken into custody/executed/pardoned or exonerated, and how they were convicted without sufficient enough evidence to incriminate them. Also take note that they were eventually exonerated thanks to DNA technology, and if this technology were available at the time of their trials they would have never been convicted.
#1 George kelly
Two unknown men robbed a cinema and left the manager and another worker murdered, leaving police without any leads. A few days after the crime the police received an anonymous letter stating Charles Connolly was "a lookout" and George Kelly was "the shooter". Without any further evidence the two were taken into custody. Connolly cracked under the pressure of being interrogated by the police and admitted to the crime. Kelly was executed, but was exonerated 53 years later.
#2 james bain
Bain was charged with kidnapping, burglary, and the rape of a 9-year-old boy. He was convicted in 1974 despite testimonies that he was "at home with his sister". The case wasn't re-evaluated until Florida passed a statute to reopen cases for DNA testing in 2000. Bain was finally released after spending almost 3 decades in jail for a crime he did not commit.
#3 Raymond Taylor
Towler was convicted in 1981 for the assault of an 11-year-old boy and a 12-year-old boy. Similar to Bain, Towler was released after DNA evidence proved his innocence. After being in jail for a long 29 years, he did not sue the court for the allowed $1.2 million compensation. He instead had "a pizza party".
#4 Michael Anthony Green
In 1983, a young female wrongly accused Green as the sole attacker of her case but 27 years later, DNA tests proved he wasn't one of the four suspects. According to reports, the victim made a false report due to pressure from law enforcement.
#5 Colin Campbell Ross
Ross was involved one of history's most famous cases, the Gun Alley Murder, as he was tried for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old. Strands of hair were found in his home and the evidence was enough to convict him. In 1998, Dr. Bentley Atchinson found that the DNA on Ross' bed didn't match the victim's, and in 2008, Ross was finally pardoned
Ronald Cotton
Like similar cases on this list, Cotton was incorrectly identified as the assailant who broke into a young woman's apartment twice. He was convicted of one account of rape and one account of burglary but after numerous appeals and briefs, a DNA test was compiled and proved him to be innocent, allowing him to be released in 1997, ten years after he was first convicted.