Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment: A System of Error Since 1976, when capital punishment was reinstated, eighty-seven men and women have been taken off death row and freed because they were proven innocent. Since the turn of the century, 343 people have been wrongly convicted. Of these, 137 were sentenced to death, twenty-five were actually executed, sixty-one served more than ten years in jail, and seven died while in prison (Rein et al. 77). These figures raise the question: how many innocent people are on death row right now? Recent studies and new evidence suggest that some death row inmates awaiting execution may have been wrongly convicted. A twenty-three year study conducted by Columbia University Law Professor James S. Liebman states that “American capital sentences are so persistently and systematically fraught with error” (Liebman et al., par. 2). In “A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995,” Liebman found that the overall rate of prejudicial error in the capital system was 68%. Currently there are approximately 3,500 inmates on death row in thirty-eight states that have adopted the death penalty. Liebman’s figure clearly indicates a possibility of some wrongful convictions in the cases of those still awaitin
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2781
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)
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