Noting that they ​“can­not rec­on­cile the fact that [the death penal­ty] is both imper­fect and irre­versible,” the Dallas Morning News has called on Texas to aban­don cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The paper, which has long sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, changed its posi­tion after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of mount­ing evi­dence that the state has wrong­ly con­vict­ed a num­ber of defen­dants in cap­i­tal tri­als and has like­ly exe­cut­ed at least one man who was inno­cent. The edi­to­r­i­al announc­ing the paper’s pol­i­cy shift stat­ed, ​“This board has lost con­fi­dence that the state of Texas can guar­an­tee that every inmate it exe­cutes is tru­ly guilty of mur­der. We do not believe that any legal sys­tem devised by inher­ent­ly flawed human beings can deter­mine with moral cer­tain­ty the guilt of every defen­dant con­vict­ed of mur­der.”

The com­plete editorial follows: 

Ernest Ray Willis set a fire that killed two women in Pecos County. So said Texas pros­e­cu­tors who obtained a con­vic­tion in 1987 and sent Mr. Willis to death row. But it wasn’t true.

Seventeen years lat­er, a fed­er­al judge over­turned the con­vic­tion, find­ing that pros­e­cu­tors had drugged Mr. Willis with pow­er­ful anti-psy­chot­ic med­ica­tion dur­ing his tri­al and then used his glazed appear­ance to char­ac­ter­ize him as ​“cold-heart­ed.” They also sup­pressed evi­dence and intro­duced nei­ther phys­i­cal proof nor eye­wit­ness­es in the tri­al – and his court-appoint­ed lawyers mount­ed a lousy defense. Besides, anoth­er death-row inmate con­fessed to the killings.

The state dropped all charges. Ernest Ray Willis emerged from prison a pau­per. But he was lucky: He had his life. Not so Carlos De Luna, who was exe­cut­ed in 1989 for the stab­bing death of a sin­gle moth­er who worked at a gas sta­tion. For years, anoth­er man with a his­to­ry of vio­lent crimes bragged that he had com­mit­ted the crime. The case against Mr. De Luna, in many eyes, does not stand up to closer examination.

There are signs he was inno­cent. We don’t know for sure, but we do know that if the state made a mis­take, noth­ing can rectify it.

And that uncom­fort­able truth has led this edi­to­r­i­al board to re-exam­ine its cen­tu­ry-old stance on the death penal­ty. This board has lost con­fi­dence that the state of Texas can guar­an­tee that every inmate it exe­cutes is tru­ly guilty of mur­der. We do not believe that any legal sys­tem devised by inher­ent­ly flawed human beings can deter­mine with moral cer­tain­ty the guilt of every defen­dant con­vict­ed of murder.

That is why we believe the state of Texas should aban­don the death penal­ty – because we can­not rec­on­cile the fact that it is both imper­fect and irreversible.

Flaws in the cap­i­tal crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem have both­ered trou­bled us for some timeyears. We have edi­to­ri­al­ized in favor of clear­er instruc­tions to juries, bet­ter coun­sel for defen­dants, the over­haul of foren­sic labs and restric­tions on the exe­cu­tion of cer­tain class­es of defen­dant. We have urged law­mak­ers to at least put in place a mora­to­ri­um, as oth­er states have, to close­ly exam­ine the system.

And yet, despite tight­en­ing judi­cial restric­tions and grow­ing con­cern, the exon­er­a­tions keep com­ing, and the doubts keep pil­ing up with­out any reac­tion from Austin.

From our van­tage point in Dallas County, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of trag­ic, fatal error in the death cham­ber appears unde­ni­able. We have seen a parade of 13 men walk out of the prison sys­tem after years – even decades – of impris­on­ment for crimes they did­n’t com­mit. Though not death penal­ty cas­es, these exam­ples – includ­ing an exon­er­a­tion just last week – reveal how shaky inves­tiga­tive tech­niques and reliance on eye­wit­ness­es can derail the lives of the innocent.

The Tulia and the fake-drug scan­dals have also erod­ed pub­lic con­fi­dence in the jus­tice sys­tem. These trav­es­ties illus­trate how greed and big­otry can poi­son the process.

It’s hard to believe that such per­va­sive human fail­ings have nev­er result­ed in the death of an innocent man.

In 2001, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said, ​“If sta­tis­tics are any indi­ca­tion, the sys­tem may well be allow­ing some inno­cent defen­dants to be executed.”

Some death penal­ty sup­port­ers acknowl­edge that inno­cents may have been and may yet be exe­cut­ed, but they argue that serv­ing the greater good is worth risk­ing that unfor­tu­nate out­come. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argues that the Byzantine appeals process effec­tive­ly sifts inno­cent con­victs from the great mass of guilty, and killing the small num­ber who fall through is a risk he’s will­ing to live with. According to polls, most Texans are, too. But this edi­to­r­i­al board is not.

Justice Scalia calls these inno­cents ​“an insignif­i­cant min­i­mum.” But that min­i­mum is not insignif­i­cant to the unjust­ly con­vict­ed death-row inmate. It is not insignif­i­cant to his or her fam­i­ly. The jurist’s ver­biage con­ceals [] a trans­gres­sion against the Western moral tra­di­tion, which estab­lish­es both the val­ue of the indi­vid­ual and the wrong­ness of mak­ing an inno­cent suf­fer for the sup­posed good of the whole. Shedding inno­cent blood has been a scan­dal since Cain slew Abel – a crime for which, the Bible says, God spared the mur­der­er, who remained under harsh judgment.

This news­pa­per’s death penal­ty posi­tion is based not on sym­pa­thy for vile mur­der­ers – who, many [] agree, deserve to die for their crimes – but rather in the con­vic­tion that not even the just dis­patch of 10, 100, or 1,000 of these wretch­es can remove the stain of inno­cent blood from our com­mon moral fabric.

This is espe­cial­ly true giv­en that our soci­ety can be ade­quate­ly guard­ed from killers using blood­less means. In 2005, the Legislature gave juries the option of sen­tenc­ing killers to life without parole.

The state holds in its hands the pow­er of life and death. It is an awe­some pow­er, one that cit­i­zens of a democ­ra­cy must approach in fear and trem­bling, and in full knowl­edge that the state’s jus­tice sys­tem, like every­thing human­i­ty touch­es, is fat­ed to fall short of per­fec­tion. If we are doomed to err in mat­ters of life and death, it is far bet­ter to err on the side of [] cau­tion. It is far bet­ter to err on the side of life. The state can­not impose death – an irrev­o­ca­ble sen­tence – with absolute cer­tain­ty in all cas­es. Therefore the state should not impose it at all.

(Dallas Morning News, April 15, 2007; [] indi­cates slight change from on-line ver­sion due to assumed typo­graph­i­cal error). See Editorials, Innocence, and New Voices.

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