I'm Innocent

Sometimes mistakes are made and innocent people are convicted and sometimes it is murder that one is convicted of and the penalty given is death. It is a horrible thought that one should be put to death when they had done no crime.

I have done some research into death row inmates who have faced their final punishment who claimed until the end that they were innocent.

Some would have to say the cry of innocence was the cry of insanity. An example would be the man who told friends and family that he had money problems and he was going to rob an old lady who ran a business by herself.

The old shopkeeper was found murdered. Her wedding ring was sold at a pawn shop and two checks from her business was cashed. The police found the person who sold the wedding ring from the fact that he gave his driver's license as ID when the transaction was made. At the time of his questioning, he confessed and then led police to a garage where her car was hidden with her body inside.

At his execution he pleaded innocence.


It is possible that some people convicted were not the ones who actually committed the killing. Four men do a home invasion in which the victim is killed. Two months earlier another victim was found who was killed in like manner (strangled with a coat hanger).

I agree that it is almost impossible to say which of the four committed the actual murder and if the one who killed the first victim also killed the second but at least one of the four is a murderer.

Two men stop at a farmhouse owned by an elderly couple. The couple is murdered by gunshot and their bodies burned. The son of their neighbors and one of his friends were arrested. The son of their neighbor was convicted of murder but claimed it was his friend who was the real killer. Maybe.

In neither of the last two cases to I believe in the innocence of the men convicted any more than I buy into the story of a man whose step sons body was found in a freezer located on this carport. Even though the other children claim they saw and heard the murder and thier parents told them conflicting stories of what happened, the man claims that a stranger took the boy, murdered him and placed the childs body in his freezer.

This is not meant to be an indorsement of the death penalty. I do have a comment about that though. The constitution says "cruel and unusual" not cruel or unusual. While lethal injection is less cruel than hanging or the firing squad it is unusual in the fact that it is only a recent method. Hanging and the firing squad have been used for hundreds of years and while cruel are not at all unusual.

I agree with the opponents of capital punishment that the death penalty does not prevent a person from commiting murder but not executed person had ever killed after their death. On the other hand, numberous people who have been given prison time have gone on to be repeat offenders.