As Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney seeks to rein­state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment with a ​“fool­proof” sys­tem(see ear­li­er What’s New item), a news inves­ti­ga­tion has revealed that 22 state men have served lengthy prison terms over the last two decades for rapes and mur­ders that they did not com­mit. Most of the wrong­ly con­vict­ed inmates were black. Experts say that Boston’s Suffolk County pros­e­cu­tors have wrong­ly con­vict­ed the sec­ond high­est num­ber of inno­cent peo­ple in the nation, falling close­ly behind error-plagued Chicago. In recent years, the Boston Police Department and District Attorney’s Office have come under heavy crit­i­cism for con­duct­ing over­ly nar­row inves­ti­ga­tions, aggres­sive inter­ro­ga­tions, using unre­li­able eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, and botched DNA and bal­lis­tic inves­ti­ga­tions. Ulysses Rodriguez Charles, who served near­ly 20 years in jail before new DNA tests led to his exon­er­a­tion, stat­ed, ​“I look at it like it was a death. I was just exist­ing. I was just breath­ing. My life had ceased…This goes on all the time. It’s hap­pen­ing now as we speak. It’s just unfor­tu­nate it hap­pened to me.” (Boston Herald, May 5, 2004) See Innocence.

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