eye for an eye...

Last night I watched a documentary about the death penalty. It is called "Deadline" and is a piece about death row inmates and their stories. An investigative journalism class in Chicago, Illinois took on the project of investigating death row cases to see if the condemned where indeed guilty and punishable by death. They found out that most of the men currently on death row were innocent! Can you believe that? It is mind boggling to me that we have so many men in prison already, but to kill innocent men just because there was no evidence for another suspect? Just because the man was black and poor, and easy to blame? Holy shit! The documentary also showed a time line of the death penalty since it came back to existence in 1976. After a short ban on capital punishment, it rose back up with a stronger force than before. Because of one man, Gilmore - who had murdered a police officer - capital punishment was back with a vengeance. People were excited to see him die, and after that didn't care about the rest of the cases. Here are some statistics and a chronological time line to show how rampant capital punishment had become.

July 1976 : Supreme Court overturns ban on capital punishment to kill Gilmore
1976 - 1980 : There are 3 executions in the United States.
1981 - 1990 : There are 140 executions.
1991 - 2000 : There are 540 executions.
1995 - 2000 : There are 152 executions in Texas under none other than our favorite politician - George W. Bush.

George W. Bush was asked during a debate whether or not all of the 458 inmates currently on death row and the 152 inmates that had been executed during his time in office were 100% guilty, beyond reasonable doubt. His reply was, "I know for a fact that all of them are 2 things. They are (1) guilty without a doubt and (2) have had full access to the court system, both federal and state."

THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

I would like to have the time in my life to investigate just 10 of those cases and I bet you that at least 1 of them was innocent. Then I would go to George W. Bush and tell him what I really think of him. But, alas - I cannot. I can just sit on my couch and feel disgusted with our system when another inmate is sitting on death row waiting to be executed. Shit.