I hate to say it, but likely the only reason we're even hearing about this man's story was *because* it was a death penalty case. Death penalty convictions have the highest per capita rate of exoneration (almost 10%), far higher than those involving life sentences; the reason for this being that death penalty cases enjoy both a far deeper level of scrutiny, and a much longer process of appeals, than any other type of case.

If Mr Graves had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, he would still be behind bars, and none of us would have ever known his name.

What needs to be done, if anything, is not to simply abolish the death penalty, but to place a cap on the maximum penalty that the state is allowed to give. Life sentences are, functionally speaking, death sentences - if you are serving a life sentence, you WILL die in prison, just very slowly. Life sentences are also far less likely to get you exonerated, and much harder to spin into an emotional story for the purposes of garnering outside support. Basically, if we were to simply abolish all death penalties tomorrow, it might make us all feel good, but what would really happen is that all current death penalty convictions, would become... death penalty convictions. Death penalty convictions WITHOUT the possibility of reprieve. Death penalty convictions, which sound nicer on paper, and therefore hardly anyone would lift a finger to stop them. It's damn near impossible to get regular people to care about abolishing a DEATH penalty, so what are the odds that regular people would ever give two shits about abolishing a more "humane" LIFE penalty?

So, again, we'd need some sort of punishment cap in place. Life sentences would have to be abolished right alongside death sentences, or else there's no net gain for social justice, only a net loss. Abolish the death penalty, and you'll still have death penalties, only now there will be more of them, and the innocent will be even less likely to get released.

Consider it possible that the reason why more prisoners are exonerated from Death Row is because more defendants are wrongfully convicted in Death penalty cases. There are a lot of possible reasons for this, but the big one is that jurors with reservations about the Death Penalty are not allowed to serve, and so you've got a whole jury full of people who are less not that troubled by the prospect of innocence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtjb89OOaPY

Doesn't actually have anything to do with the article but pretty classic.

America

"Guy with no money guy"? He sounds like the saddest superhero. Probably not much better off than this man, either.