... is to abolish the death penalty, so that would mean life in prison for inmates. In addition all inmates will have the opportunity to take a DNA test. The obvious alternative is to keep the death penalty the way it is by allowing the states to chose whether they would like to use ... death penalty, which would mean sentencing convicted people to life in prison. Also, under this alternative it would require DNA test for all old and new inmates. By having inmates take a DNA test it would clear the innocent. The goal to this alternative is that no one dies and the innocent are saved ... th...

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• Grade Level: High School

... or destruction of property related to foreign or interstate commerce. The list goes on. Here is a bill that is on my topic. My bill is on DNA testing for people on death row. This is because there are over 75 people that have been let off from being prosecuted in the U.S. in the last ... couple of years just by taking a DNA sample. Then there are all of those other people in the past years that were killed by not being tested, that could have been innocent just by looking ... at a little blood. The bill that I am doing is called the "Convicted Offender DNA Index System Support Act."" T...

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... for reform will be." (religioustolerance) Another obvious problem with capital punishment is the possibility of executing innocent people. In 2000, Illinois freed 13 prisoners from death row due to new DNA evidence, after some had come within 50 hours of their execution date. (Davey) How many innocent people died before the use of ... ? Stanley Cohen once said that in a legal system frayed by error and uncertainty, the advent of forensic DNA is a magic bullet. (Cohen) The use of DNA technology can provide scientific proof, beyond any question, of a suspect's guilt or innocence; unfortuna...

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... the exercising of the death penalty should be put on hold for all convicted murderers that were not found guilty through DNA testing. Any current convicted murderers found guilty through DNA testing shall be put to death immediately. The convicted murders that have been on death row for many years should be ... investigated into the validity of their guilt through DNA testing. Many prosecutors feel that exonerating a convicted murderer would be an attack on the system. This is not true. It would simply be ... life. He leads up the project known as the, "Innocence Project." All schedule...

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... row inmate carried such significance. "On June 1, 2000, Governor Bush issued a 30-day stay of execution to convicted murderer Ricky McGinn, for DNA testing. McGinn was convicted of raping and murdering, his 12-year-old stepdaughter in 1993. The DNA tests came back in positive in August, and a new September execution date was set for McGinn" (txexecutions 2001). Many critics believed that ... who has been executed in Texas on his watch was guilty" (U.S. News & World Report 21). One of the main weapons challenging the death penalty is the use of, DNA testing or evidence. DNA testing has b...

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... to be responsible for killing someone that is not guilty and this is the one argument that almost makes me second-guess my opinion. Thanks to the advancement of technology, DNA testing has helped ease this burden. Finding DNA evidence at a crime scene can prove whether a suspect is guilty or innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. Abolitionists point to the cases where ... DNA evidence has exonerated people sentenced to death for a murder they did not commit. Unfortunately, injustices do happen in the courts due to faulty eyewitnesses, poor police work, or corruption. According ... to the ...

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... to pardon a corpse. Death is permanent, forever, and irreversible. Forensic evidence is now much more scientific with the use of DNA testing. Because of the advancements, 106 people have been freed of prison, and 12 cases off death row since 1989. DNA exonerations have the power to overtake the most persuasive eyewitnesses because it forces a reconsideration of the "physiology of truth". Unfortunately ... , many states do not offer DNA testing, and little evidence is available. It has been suggested that videotaping all evidence and statements would assist to minimize coercion. Since eve...

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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... case of Dennis Fritz being arrested, convicted and spending eleven years in prison for a rape he did not commit. It is proven through DNA tests that sixty-seven people were sent to prison and death row for crimes they did not commit. It also states that many local prosecutors ... was mistaken to be the rapist, identified by an eyewitness. Chapter two speaks of an invention called PCR. It is referred to as the "DNA fingerprint test (pg.36)." This discovery could be used in criminal investigations to prove the guilty criminal. It explains how before PCR, the most ... suspect was by blood ...

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... system but instead the unofficial efforts of everyday citizens. Another key factor that has played a recent role in capitol cases is DNA testing. This testing only became available in the early 1990's due to advancements in science and technology. If DNA testing had not been discovered there are several cases where innocent people would have most likely been executed. In the past ... ten years alone there have been eight cases where DNA has played a key role in trials. (Death). So think about it. The odds are high ... that if DNA testing had been available in earlier cases some individ...

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... a store owner. The only physical proof that the prosecution had was a hair found at the crime scene. Jones was convicted in 1989 before DNA tests were available, but when they were made available in 2000, the request for a DNA test was ignore, and Jones was executed. In 2007, the Innocence Project filed a law suit requesting for the hair so that it could ... undergo DNA testing. The request was permitted, and the hair was proven to not belong to Jones, but to the victim. An innocent man lost his life because of a piece of evidence ... ...

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... mistakes have been made in sentencing people to death. Many of the releases of innocent defendants from death row came about as a result of factors outside of the justice system. DNA testing has death row inmates from blame. Here, too, the justice system had concluded that these defendants were guilty and deserving of the death penalty ... in the early 1990's, due to advancements in science. If this testing had not been discovered until ten years later, many of these inmates would have been executed. And if DNA testing had been applied to earlier cases where inmates were executed in the...

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... absolute risk of executing more. Judges or Grand Juries believe false witnesses or examine the crime evidence in a wrong way. Therefore, advancements in science and DNA testing has changed the destiny of the innocent suspects dramatically. DNA testing became available in 1995, due to advances in science. By the aids of the new techniques, policemen and judges reinvestigated the evidences and found ... ...

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... the legal issue of how much power the people and the courts should be allowed to have, which also leads into another topic of the effects of new technology, like DNA testing, that can either overturn an early ruling of guilt or at the same time increase the effectiveness of a prosecutions case against the accused. As I mentioned earlier, I believe that the ... death much less an innocent person put in jail for any amount of time. However, is the solution an end to the death penalty? I think not. With the advent of DNA testing, the margin for error in many cases is almost nonexistent. In...

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... been carried out? The main flaw in capital punishment is that it cannot be reversed Lawyer Barry Scheck wins and secures the freedom of death row inmates using deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) evidence testing. This brings about doubts in the judicial process and its reliability. In Illinois 13 inmates were released from death row after doubts brought about by ... DNA testing. Capital punishment takes the lives of persons who might or might not take lives again. How many of those can be innocent lives being put to death. Unless you ... ...

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... . Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 102 men and women have been release from death row just some minutes away from execution. In other cases, DNA testing has also exonerated death row inmates. DNA testing was just invented in the early 1990s, due to advancements in science. If this testing had not been discovered until ten years later, many of these ... ...

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... , then they should be accountable to the highest punishment of their life. Juries make their decisions on presented evidence with limited scientific evidence. Recent technological advances in the field of DNA have allowed one hundred and eleven death row inmates to be exonerated for the crimes that they would have been put the death for. In lieu of this new way ... he was accused of. In addition, this testing does not bring into account whether evidence was tainted by other fibers or contamination found at the crime scene. Just because no DNA was found at the crime scene should not bind ...

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... . He cited that because there is a risk that innocent people could be executed, he ruled the federal death penalty unconstitutional. Rakoff, a New York Judge, made this decision at a time where DNA testing and other technological advancements flourish in the court of law to help inmates challenge rulings and convictions. It was reported in the USA Today that because of ... DNA testing, 12 death-row inmates have been freed. In earlier times, there would have been no possible way for the court to see that they were innocent, leading to their ... ...

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... commit," (Leahy). This occurred following the release of Ray Krone from Arizona State Prison in Yuma. Mr. Krone was exonerated by DNA evidence. All of the 100 prisoners who have been freed from the death sentence since 1976 -- mostly after DNA evidence conclusively proved their innocence represent the exception rather than the rule in the U.S. capital punishment system, according to William F. Schulz ... ...

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... for a crime they did not commit. At least ten people since 1976 are thought to have been innocent (listverse) and 18 people have been exonerated thanks to the science of DNA analysis (the innocence project). The justice system is filled with flaws and imperfection is expected because people make mistakes. However, condemning innocent people to death is something this country should ... ...

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... cleared before it was to late did not find freedom through the normal appeal process, many of these cases were discovered through the recent breakthroughs in scientific technology. Such as DNA evidence and hair test sampling. Reports insist that a total of 23 innocent people were executed in the United States during the 20th century. This leads some to think that the ... ...

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... they did not commit, all by the name of justice. It has happened that after the execution of the alleged guilty party, the real murderer was caught by new techniques (DNA testing) and/or had confessed to free his guilty conscience. The unique thing about the death penalty is that it is final and irreversible and so there is no room ... ...

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... are actually innocent (NCADP). These are fine examples of capital punishment gone too far. According to the NCADP, "Virginia executed Joseph O"Dell on July 23, 1997 despite the existence of DNA evidence that could have proved O"Dell's innocence. The courts refused to consider this new evidence because Virginia law says that any evidence found after twenty-one days is inadmissible in ... ...

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... a scary proposition. One in which the advantages are clearly outweighed by all the disadvantages that go along with capital punishment. But, under today's system where such assurances exist such as DNA evidence, and the belief that a person is innocent until proven guilty, the use of the death penalty in our current system seems more justifiable. Personally, when I read stories similar to ... ...

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... no longer acceptable. Other reasons for my opposition against capital punishment: I know mistakes can and have been made in trials involving the death penalty; recently due to the introduction of DNA technology, a number of prisoners on death row have been found innocent of their charged crimes. Another reason of opposition is the death penalty is still applied in a discriminatory way: the ... ...

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... penalty. I think that as long as death penalty is an option, there is the possibility that innocent people will be wrongfully accused. Today we have many more techniques such as DNA testing, but there are still chances that innocent lives will be taken. An example of this was when Greg Wilhoit spent six years on death row for a crime that he ... ...

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• Grade Level: High School