About the Death Penalty...

No question, Stephen Harper and his trolls would reinstate the death penalty in a final heartbeat if they thought they could get away with it. The idea of killing people has a deep-rooted appeal to their Old Testamental minds.

In other words, they would have Canada join the likes of China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and the US. The Big Six account for 91% of all the executions carried out by the 25-Dark Age nations that still indulge in this pastime. After that they'll reinstate wife-beating and, someday, who knows, slavery?

What's wrong with the death penalty? There's plenty wrong with it but, first and foremost, is that it can result in state homicide of innocent people wrongly convicted.

Sure we've all heard of the DNA-cases where forensic biology rescued innocents sitting on death row. But they were just a small fraction of the killers awaiting execution, right? Fair enough. What's missing in this argument is reality. We've somehow come to assume that the only innocents sitting on death row are those who've since been cleared by DNA testing. What a fanciful idea!

There are plenty of murder convictions where DNA isn't relevant evidence. It's a technology that lends itself to crimes where the killer leaves biological trace evidence - usually hair or body fluids. What if there is no such evidence? Well the jury has to weigh other evidence, itself often circumstantial.

We know, from the DNA cases, that several innocents were convicted long before the days of DNA testing, on the strength of unreliable eyewitness identifications, botched forensics, incompetent defence counsel, or police or prosecutorial misconduct.

The worst convictions are those grounded on eyewitness testimony. That's where the person in the witness box points the accusatory finger at the other person sitting (conveniently) in the prisoner's box or at the defence table and pronounces "that's him, that's the guy I saw do the dirty deed." Compelling stuff indeed but proven to be astonishingly unreliable.

Botched forensics? Consider Ontario pathologist Dr. Charles Smith or the FBI crime lab scandal or the dozens of other examples you can easily find if you bother looking.

Incompetent defence counsel? There's no shortage of them.

Police or prosecutorial misconduct? Yes, it happens. Greenspan even wrote a book about it. Cops simply making up stories or telling incomplete accounts or burying exculpatory evidence. Prosecutors playing similar games. It happens.

You see, atop the DNA cases, there are plenty of people convicted of murder as a result of these other factors. There are innocents who haven't got the DNA Get Out of Jail card.

But this isn't about those people sitting on Death Row. It's about you and how we keep you from getting slung into a Death Row cell. What makes you think it couldn't happen to you? You're fooling yourself if you believe that.

In short, we can either find a way to eliminate botched forensics or mistaken identity or incompetent counsel or police or prosecutorial misconduct or flaws in criminal procedure and the laws of evidence - or - we can accept that we can't do the impossible and because of that we accept that society cannot take the lives of innocent people who may be condemned by serious defects in our criminal justice system.

Before leaving this subject there is one remedial step we can, and should, take. If, in the course of a proceeding, it becomes apparent that the defendant has been the victim of police or prosecutorial misconduct, we ought to take those offenders and give them cells of their own. We need to make police understand that they're investigators, not prosecutors, and their job isn't to facilitate convictions but merely to gather and present the evidence - fully, fairly and accurately. They betray all of us and society suffers when they pervert our fundamental principles of justice.