At one time or another most of us have stood transfixed; watching the brilliance of a lightening storm. When it comes down to it, lightening is pretty awesome and cool to watch – at least until it zaps you in the butt; then it’s not so cool anymore.

That’s what the death penalty is like, it appeals to us at a primal level; fulfilling our need for vengeance. Most people, that support the death penalty, do so without any need for intellectual debate or even momentary contemplation on the inherent fallibility of our judicial process. Rather, they assume anyone convicted and condemned to death must be guilty. So what if the inconvenient truth actually is that at least 138 men and women who were condemned to death have subsequently been exonerated and released from death row in recent years. AT LEAST 138 as of October 2010!

In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional upon finding that it was “arbitrarily and capriciously applied.” See, Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). At least one justice compared being sentenced to death to being struck by lightening. Nobody can predict when it might strike or who it might hit. Since then the courts claim to have adopted greater protections to ensure that only the “worst of the worst” will be eligible to be sentenced to death.

In the years since Furman, has anything really changed? The indisputable evidence shows that it has not. The vast majority of those condemned to death today are by no means the “worst of the worst.” The nature of their crimes has far less to do with the decision of who will live and who will die than the social and economic statue of the accused. Rich defendants do not get sentenced to death ~ only the poorest of the poor, predominately in the old traditional southern states. Nobody can deny this disparity ~ but our courts refuse to address this issue.

The one single most common denominator clearly applicable to those sentenced to death is the quality of legal representation the accused received at trial. With very rare exception, those sentenced to death had been represented by court appointed lawyers often with no experience in defending against a capital charge. All too often these substandard lawyers put up nothing more than a pathetic pretense of representation.

Then there is the chronic epidemic of prosecutional misconduct. Most people blindly assume that those prosecuting capital cases are above reproach; bound by a sacred code of professional conduct. Yet the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions is misconduct on the part of the prosecutor. Prosecutors know that they are absolutely immune from any consequences by sending an innocent man to death row; all that really matters is that they win and they accomplish that by any means necessary. ANY MEANS NECESSARY ~ in case after case this indisputable truth has been illustrated.

Anyone familiar with our legal system knows that prosecutors regularly conceal evidence and coerce witnesses to provide false testimony ~ even often fabricating the evidence needed to win the case. It’s all about winning and “the ends justify the means.” Prosecutors don’t get promoted by losing cases and don’t see state attorneys run for elected office by bragging about how many trials they lost. Once committed to prosecuting a case they will do whatever it takes to win ~ truth and justice become irrelevant.

We assume that every capital case is thoroughly reviewed by the appeal courts and that these courts will make sure that the innocent are protected. But our contemporary judicial system has become completely corrupted by politics. In fact, our own U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly declared that a claim of innocence cannot be raised on appeal absent establishing a substantial constitutional error resulting in the deprivations of a “fair trial.” See, Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993).

For this reason, the execution of the innocent has become absolutely inevitable. Even some of the Supreme Court Justices have publicly conceded that innocent people have been put to death.

Incredibly, there are many who will argue that the occasional execution of an innocent man is an acceptable risk if it means executing more of the guilty. That’s pretty easy to say when you’re not the one being put to death for a crime you didn’t commit. I’d wager a bet that these people would feel differently if they were the ones condemned to death in spite of innocence.

Being willing to put the occasional innocent to death to make sure we execute the presumed guilty is unconscionable. How many innocent people are expendable; where do we draw that line? If one innocent man executed is an acceptable loss, then why not ten? If we have no problem killing ten innocent men; then why not a hundred?

If we are so willing to allow the innocent to be executed, then why do we bother to provide prolonged appellate review in the first place? When it comes down to it, the death penalty is about fulfilling our need for vengeance. Those that blindly support it often express their frustration at the seemingly endless appeals that delay executions, so why waste the time and money even reviewing capital convictions? Why even waste the time going though an expensive jury trial? Certainly the police and prosecutors wouldn’t put an innocent man on trial. Even if they knowingly did prosecute an occasional innocent or two or ten (or 138) ~ those innocents would be expendable for the greater good, right?

Recent studies have shown that for every execution carried out in the State of Florida, it has cost taxpayers at least $20 million dollars. Every year the death penalty in Florida alone costs taxpayers at least $50 million dollars. In truth, that cost is actually substantially higher.

If those we condemn to death were sentenced to life in prison, the cost would only be $18 to $20 thousand dollars a year each. More importantly, a sentence of life in prison would not put innocent people to death.

Sadly, intellectual reasoning is not what the death penalty is about today; it’s about fulfilling our primitive need to seek vengeance. Perhaps that itself is the greatest tragedy of all. As a “civilized” society, we should be better than that. The death penalty today is nothing more that a modern twist on the lynch mobs of yesterday. Although we have sterilized the process, the end result remains the same.

Attempting to advocate intellectual debates is the quintessential exercise of futility ~ very few of those who support capital punishment are willing to objectively acknowledge the inherent fallibility of our judicial process. The execution of the innocent is an inevitable, but (to them) acceptable consequence of society’s need to seek vengeance. They will never understand the basic logic and inescapable truth ~ when we as a society put even one innocent person to death, then as a society we have committed an act of cold blooded and deliberate murder.

Nobody can deny that lightening does strike and kill innocent people and nobody can deny that as long as the death penalty remains an acceptable practice, innocent people will inevitably be put to death. Lightening is an act of God ~ the death penalty is an act inflicted by men blinded by their own need for vengeance. We should be better than that.