Monday, January 26, 2015

Why I Am Against the Death Penalty

It's because of this type of official incompetence (as well as prosecutor overreach).
After 37 years in prison, innocent North Carolina man freed

"But his freedom almost didn’t happen because evidence had been lost for years.

His attorney, Christine Mumma, took the case in 2004 and felt like she had been running out of options and considered closing the case in 2012. Then court clerks discovered a misplaced envelope of evidence while cleaning out a high shelf of a vault.

The envelope contained hair, found on the victim and believed to be the attacker’s, that turned out to be a key piece of evidence needed to do DNA testing, which wasn’t available when Sledge went on trial 1978.

“I understand those shelves were very high, but there was a ladder in that room,” said Mumma, a lawyer for the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence."

[Emphasis Added]
This man should be fully compensated for his erroneous conviction and punishment. I am certain that others have been killed by the state on equally false grounds.

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