Ensuring justice

Ensuring Justice
NUMBERS 35:1- 36: 13

A Florida lawyer commented this month that it is becoming more and more common to hear news accounts of people convicted of first-degree murder, sentenced to death, then released many years later after it is determined (usually through DNA testing) that actually they were innocent. Over a hundred people have been released from death row over the past thirty years (over a thousand have been executed). The lawyer described this statistic as horrifying, though one might also feel a certain relief. The execution of those released would be much more horrific; and there is no doubt that this has happened from time to time; last month Associated Press reported such a case in Texas. In Britain, several men were exonerated after their execution in the years immediately before the abolition of the death penalty in 1969...