With nearly 400 exonerations coupled with the long history of carrying out the death penalty it stands to reason that innocent people have been executed. Because death by state sanction is irreversible, it makes sense to be absolutely certain --"beyond a reasonable doubt"--that the person being executed is guilty.
Yet, there is not even agreement on the US Supreme Court about the level of certainty required to substantiate the imposition of the death penalty.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia by Wikimedia
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In 2006 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote:
It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single case--not one--in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby. The dissent makes much of the new-found capacity of DNA testing to establish innocence. But in every case of an executed defendant of which I am aware, that technology has confirmed guilt.
{KANSAS v. MARSH (No. 04-1170), 278 Kan. 520, 102 P. 3d 445, reversed and remanded. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-1170.ZC.html}
Despite Justice Scalia's assurances that we have never executed an innocent person, exonerations are like the canary in the mine. They raise serious concerns that we have in fact executed innocent people.
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