hat Anthony Porter is alive today in spite of the system. Every piece of evidence that led to his release and exoneration was due to the work and diligence of people outside the system. This is not an example of the judicial system at its best but at its worst. The truly tragic issue is the fact that while more and more innocent death row inmates are being released every day, more still are being shuffled in under the same corrupt and flawed system that sentenced so many to be killed in the first place. Many who support the death penalty would have you believe that capital punishment is a fair and necessary means of carrying out justice, but new facts and studies presented every day support the idea that the death penalty is not only an unjust but an unrealistic answer to the many issues plaguing society today.
             "I shall ask for the abolition of the death penalty until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me," remarked the Marquis de Lafayette in the late Seventeen hundreds. It would appear, today, that his observation has been overlooked. Of the endless arguments that could be used to refute the idea that the death penalty is administered fairly, the most obvious are the cases of wrongful convictions. While most people would not view this as a significant problem, most people are also not aware of the facts. Since 1973, a total of sixty-nine people have been released from death row after their innocence was confirmed. Twenty-one of those inmates were released in or after 1993 and the number is still rising. Most of these cases were overturned not because a particular court discover
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