Law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges “get it right” many, many more times than they get it wrong, but a string of notorious exceptions is shaking confidence in justice in North Carolina.
Henry Lee McCollum walked out of Central Prison last week, a free man, thanks to new advances in forensic science that linked the DNA from another suspect to a rape and murder that McCollum and his half-brother Leon Brown had been accused of committing.
McCollum’s exoneration was all the more remarkable because he had been sitting on Death Row for the past 30 years.
If not for a number of challenges over the years to capital punishment in North Carolina, McCollum almost certainly would be dead.
As mentally challenged teenagers in the 1980s, McCollum and Brown were intensely interrogated in connection with the rape and murder of the child that another man is now accused of committing. They “confessed” to the crime after hours of questioning, despite the fact there was no physical evidence tying them to the crime.
Almost all of us who support capital punishment have complained at one point or another about the length of time it takes to carry out the sentence. But given the number of recent exonerations because of new DNA testing methods, we’re growing less impatient in capital cases.
It’s time for the state to look long and hard at the circumstances that sometimes lead to the convictions of innocent people. None of us wants to witness the death of someone who has been falsely accused.
http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/opinion/our-views/exonerations-shake-faith-system-2647543
