Former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Blackmar recent­ly reit­er­at­ed his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty and his con­cerns about wrong­ful con­vic­tions, not­ing that the exon­er­a­tion of Missouri death row inmate Joseph Amrine ​“makes me won­der how many peo­ple there are who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed.” Amrine spent 26 years in prison, 17 of them on death row, before his con­vic­tion was over­turned and he was released in July 2003. ​“The les­son is that peo­ple were per­suad­ed even­tu­al­ly that he was inno­cent. But there are a fair num­ber of peo­ple who were not guilty, who did­n’t receive such treat­ment and were exe­cut­ed,” said Blackmar dur­ing his speech in Columbia, Missouri. During his dis­cus­sion on the issue of inno­cence, Blackmar stat­ed that even a sen­tenc­ing error rate of one or two per­cent would be too much to jus­ti­fy main­tain­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. (Columbia Missourian, November 11, 2004) See Innocence and New Voices.

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