Articles

House Bill 185 urges unwarranted
rush to execution

Opinion by John Baker Brown Jr.
Faith And The City e.Newsletter
January 31, 2007

It seems more than a bit ironic that, within a few days of the highly publicized story of the release of a wrongly convicted man after nearly 22 years of imprisonment, a bill is introduced in the state legislature to make it easier to execute a person convicted of a capital crime.

The January 25 front-page story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes how Willie “Pete” Williams, convicted of rape in 1985, has been absolved of the crime by DNA evidence, largely through the efforts of the Georgia Innocence Project. Television coverage was particularly moving, with shots of Williams, 44, flanked by his sister and his mother with her arm around her son’s waist as if to ensure he would never be taken from her again.

Remarkably, Williams says he never lost his faith and bears no ill will for the miscarriage of justice that stole more than two decades from him. It seems he merely wants to get on with his life – which of course is what most of us were doing with our lives while this innocent man was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit but for which he was convicted.

My point is both simple and obvious. If Williams had been wrongly convicted of a capital crime and executed, DNA evidence might conceivably have cleared him, but there would be no media images of him as a free man surrounded by loving family members. There would be no sound bites of his magnanimous expressions of forgiveness for the wrong done him by society – a wrong that society eventually was able to correct.

House Bill 185 would make it easier for society to make a mistake in a capital case and commit a wrong that it cannot correct. The bill would allow judges to impose the death penalty without a unanimous jury vote for execution. Only nine votes for execution would be required if the bill becomes law. Although, House Bill 185 would not change the requirement for a unanimous jury vote for conviction, the proposed legislation clearly paves the way to society’s ultimate and utterly irreversible punishment.

The Williams case and others like it must remind us that our justice system, like all human institutions, is far from perfect. The system makes mistakes. The problem with the death penalty is that it is not a correctable mistake. DNA evidence may exonerate an individual – but it cannot restore a life.

In short, the finality of execution should encourage us to be more reluctant to impose the death penalty – not seek ways to impose it more freely.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Faith And The City.

The writer serves as director of communications for Faith And The City and editor of the Faith And The City e.Newsletter. He can be reached at jbrown@faithandthecity.org.

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