The Death of the Death Penalty

("The Innocent on Death Row")

This case involves a confluence of virtually every critical problem relating to death penalty matters: intellectual impairment, long ignored DNA evidence, prosecutorial misconduct and a juvenile defendant. For those who find the implementation of the death penalty fraught with potential disaster, this case serves as the poster child.

The system of justice in this country has not been even remotely equally or fairly implemented. Many young impoverished blacks are subjected to the worst of abuses, their trials (and tribulations)  exposing the pitfalls and reflecting our prejudices.

The fear is that Justice Scalia,and those like him, who found this matter to be a primer for why the imposition of the death sentence is proper and compelling, will be much less likely to admit that it now stands for the proposition that there are a host of salient factors crying out for the death of the death penalty.