The April 2018 exon­er­a­tion of Vicente Benavides Figueroa, wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death on charges of rap­ing, sodom­iz­ing, and mur­der­ing his girl­friend’s 21-month-old daugh­ter, illus­trates why the death penal­ty should be abol­ished, the Los Angeles Times said in an April 27, 2018 edi­to­r­i­al. Benavides — an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled Mexican nation­al who was work­ing as a sea­son­al farm work­er — was sen­tenced to death after med­ical wit­ness­es had been pro­vid­ed incom­plete hos­pi­tal records and erro­neous­ly tes­ti­fied that the child had been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed. His con­vic­tion, the paper wrote, ​“was an egre­gious mis­car­riage of jus­tice; he spent a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry on death row for a crime he appar­ent­ly did not com­mit. His exon­er­a­tion serves as a reminder of what ought to be abun­dant­ly clear by now: that despite jury tri­als, appel­late recon­sid­er­a­tion and years of motions and counter-motions, the jus­tice sys­tem is not infal­li­ble, and it is pos­si­ble (or per­haps inevitable) that inno­cent peo­ple will end up fac­ing exe­cu­tion at the hands of the state.” Benavides’s case, the Times said ​“ought to remind us of the dan­gers inher­ent in California’s efforts to speed up the cal­en­dar for death penal­ty appeals under Proposition 66 .… Moving more quick­ly to exe­cute con­vict­ed death row inmates increas­es the like­li­hood that due process will be giv­en short shrift and the inno­cent will be put to death.” The records that showed 21-month-old Consuelo Verdugo had not been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed — and that cast doubt on whether she had been mur­dered at all — were not dis­cov­ered until 7 years after tri­al. The one year Proposition 66 gives appel­late lawyers to inves­ti­gate cas­es and file appeals makes it less like­ly that they will dis­cov­er such evi­dence ​“and thus more like­ly that inno­cent peo­ple will be put to death.” The edi­to­r­i­al con­clud­ed: ​“The unfix­able prob­lem with the death penal­ty is that mis­takes get made, wit­ness­es lie, con­fes­sions get coerced — all fac­tors that can lead to false con­vic­tions. It is abject­ly immoral to speed things up by lim­it­ing due process. The bet­ter solu­tion is to get rid of the death penalty altogether.”

(Editorial, The lat­est California death row exon­er­a­tion shows why we need to end the death penal­ty, Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2018.) See Editorials and Innocence.

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