When a district attorney is thinking of running for governor of the state or perhaps attorney general, he/she needs to get favorable publicity and establish a reputation among voters as "tough on crime." What better way to get front page coverage than a capital case and a death penalty conviction? A person's life, no matter what the person has done, should not depend on politics. Sherrill (2001) states "Misconduct abounds. Prosecutors who bully, lie and misuse or hide evidence are as common as baseball players who chew gum. In all the most active capital-punishment states, prosecutors often build their cases by hiding evidence and using jailhouse snitches eager to lie in return for lower sentences for themselves" (p. 16).

             Capital punishment is a danger to the innocent. In January of 2000, Governor George Ryan of Illinois responded to the discovery that 13 death row inmates had been wrongly convicted by declaring a moratorium on executions (Saletan, 2000). He stated his reasons in a speech at Northwestern University School of Law: "Because of questions about the fairness of .sentencing; because of the spectacular failure to reform the system; because we have seen justice delayed for countless death row inmates with potentially meritorious claims; because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious-and therefore immoral. Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error-error in determining guilt, and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die" (Ryan, cited in Hall, 2003). DNA tests exonerated more than 80 prisoners, eight of them on death row in 2003. Before DNA testing, those eight would have been wrongfully executed and nobody would have known the difference. Plenty more innocent people are still on death row but may not be so lucky. .

             Those who favor capital punishment argue that it gets dangerous criminals off the streets thereby insuring more safety to the public.