In an arti­cle about the approach­ing 1,000th exe­cu­tion in the U.S., Tarrant County pros­e­cu­tor Alan Levy and Harris County District Attorney Charles Rosenthal addressed the cur­rent state of the death penal­ty and the impact of grow­ing con­cerns about the issue of inno­cence:

Levy, who heads the crim­i­nal divi­sion of the Tarrant County D.A.‘s office, said that he often won­ders whether the exe­cu­tions that have tak­en place have been worth the expense, con­tro­ver­sy, and time: ​“It’s a pret­ty clum­sy mech­a­nism.” When the penal­ty isn’t paid until ​“eight or 10 or 15 years lat­er, it’s dif­fi­cult to think of it being very use­ful.” Levy added that pros­e­cu­tors in his office are encoun­ter­ing prospec­tive jurors who are con­cerned about sen­tenc­ing an inno­cent per­son to death. According to Levy, these prospec­tive jurors are ​“absolute­ly con­vinced that inno­cent peo­ple are being exe­cut­ed,” and believe that they might ​“wake up in the mid­dle of the night and find out they’ve sen­tenced an inno­cent man to death row.” 

Rosenthal said that he would like­ly resign if an inno­cent per­son were to be exe­cut­ed under his watch. ​“I’d feel hor­ri­ble, prob­a­bly worse than that; it would prob­a­bly bring me to the point of res­ig­na­tion if we con­vict­ed some­one who was inno­cent.”

(Fort Worth Weekly, November 2, 2005). See New Voices and Innocence.

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