Reducing Wrongful Convictions

The details of implementation are the difference between the death penalty working financially and not. So what if we imagined different details? Can we come up with a better system overall? And if we do, where does that leave the death penalty?

One serious problem with our present system is the high rate of false convictions. This doesn't just apply to capital cases; it needs to be fixed across all cases. The system already admits there's a problem, and tries to ameliorate it by providing appeal attorneys to those on death row. But doing that only for death row inmates, and only after years in prison, is treating a symptom, and treating it poorly at that. We need to keep innocents from being convicted in the first place, of any crime!

So what are the causes of wrongful convictions? I am clearly not a lawyer, but from my naive perspective, I see two ways someone gets convicted: pleading guilty, or being found guilty. I'll talk about both in upcoming posts.