From: frank theriault
There's a Toronto-based group called the Association in Defence of the
Wrongly Convicted:
http://www.aidwyc.org/
The lawyer who started it, James Lockyer is brilliant. I juniored on
a trial many years ago (while he was a junior partner with a prominent
Toronto criminal firm) and saw him do a cross-exam and he was amazing.
I learned a lot from watching that one cross.
Anyway, they've freed dozens of innocent prisoners, some of whom have
spent decades in jail.
As a percentage of those convicted, the wrongly convicted is very very
small, but for those who've lost years of their lives, one can't
imagine the torment. To my mind, one very good argument against the
death penalty (some of those wrongly conviced would have been put to
death were they convicted in a US death penalty state).
From my point of view, that's the only valid argument against the death
penalty. And, from my point of view again, it's the only argument those
who death penalty advocates have failed provide a valid counter-argument
for.
I'm ambivalent about the death penalty, believing there are crimes
terrible enough to demand ultimate retribution ... but at the same time
I just don't think the "state" is competent enough to trust with that
kind of power.
In the end, life without parole does permit mistakes of that magnitude
to be alleviated, if not corrected.
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