Blog Post #2-Every Reason NOT to Convict Walter McMillian

The death penalty should be stopped because many times the evidence used to convict these men and women is not credible.  The evidence is not strong enough.  Also, there are times like in the Walter McMillian case when the reason someone gets convicted is racially motivated.   For example, in the 60 minutes episode that aired before McMillian was released we see Ralph Myers describing how his testimony was not taken seriously.  The death penalty alone imposes an irrevocable sentence. Once an inmate is executed, nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has been made. There is considerable evidence that many mistakes have been made in sentencing people to death.   Ralph Myers in the Walter McMillian case explained that he told four different doctors that he was lying about Walter's involvement in the murder.  Chapman, the district attorney of the case, stated in the 60 Minutes interview that it did not matter that Myers told four different doctors that he was lying.  First of all, juries always need to know all the evidence in the trial.  Stevenson, Walter's attorney, even says in the interview that it is the D.A.'s job to want justice.  Justice is not served if all the evidence is not presented to the jury.  

According to the Death Penalty Information website, "our capital punishment system is unreliable. A recent study by Columbia University Law School found that two thirds of all capital trials contained serious errors. When the cases were retried, over 80% of the defendants were not sentenced to death and 7% were completely acquitted."  Now, I am going to write about why this matters in Walter's case and in general

Often when the wrongly convicted get out of death row, their lives are not improved.  While they are not in threat of impending death in an electric chair or lethal injection, they suffer health issues because of the trauma of being on death row.  For example, Walter suffered from dementia, which is memory loss similar to Alzheimer's.  According to many research journals on this topic, traumatic events are often linked to early onset dementia.