NYTimes editorial board continues its call to end death penalty

The New York Times editorial board has become an increasingly staunch critic of the death penalty. Earlier this year, it called the death penalty a "despicable practice" that is both "racist" and "barbaric." The board again called for an end to the "irretrievably flawed" and "immoral" practice earlier this week after DNA evidence compelled a state judge to overturn the conviction of two North Carolina men for the 1983 rape and murder of a young girl. It argued:

Cases of capital prosecutions based on flimsy evidence or marred by prosecutorial misconduct, not to mention racial bias, are distressingly common... 

 

How many more remain on death row today? Can the American people be assured that none will be killed by the state? For this reason alone, the death penalty must end.

The Times observed that the two North Carolinians were treated particularly poorly. "The arrests, confessions, trial, and convictions" of the two men were all highly questionable. Both men were just teenagers at the time of their arrests, but they nevertheless were questioned for hours without their parents or lawyers present. They also were compelled to sign confessions written by the police. The prosecution failed to inform the defense of potentially exculpatory evidence, and it declined to seriously consider a third suspect - even when police requested fingerprint analysis of a print found at the crime scene as a possible match to that suspect.

Then there's this: "The prosecutor on the case, Joe Freeman Britt, was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “deadliest prosecutor” for the nearly 50 death sentences he won during his tenure. Almost all have since been overturned."