Innocence: Will it open or end the renewed debate on the death penalty in the 
U.S.?
 
	This week, the New York Times published an op-ed by an Oregon 
prosecutor and well-known capital punishment advocate who asserted that a 
"generous" reading of the data on wrongful convictions in the U.S. over the past 
15 years shows an "error rate [of] .027 percent or, to put it another way, a 
success rate of 99.973 percent."  He argued that " . . . the words 'innocent' and 'exonerated' . . .  have been tortured beyond recognition" in order to dupe the public into believing "that wrongfully convicted death row inmates are the virtual rule."  In his view, "Americans should be far more worried about the wrongfully freed than the wrongfully convicted."  

	The op-ed was written in the wake of news that DNA results did not 
exonerate Roger Coleman, who was executed in Virginia in 1992.  For more than 
a decade, some had urged that Coleman was innocent and that DNA testing 
would not only vindicate him, but furnish additional evidence that innocent people have been executed in this country.  Doubtless, respected scholars who have studied error rates in the administration of the death penalty and the larger criminal justice system will respond to the prosecutor's article with the results of studies that show he mischaracterized, manipulated and misstated the numbers.  And well they should.  

	However, Coleman's case provided only the most recent opportunity for 
death penalty proponents to argue, as President George Bush repeatedly has, 
that we, in the U.S., do not execute innocent people.  (Other capital punishment 
supporters, such as former Senator Bob Barr, have taken the view that even if 
we have put innocent people to death, it is a reasonable price to pay to ensure 
that this nation can continue to impose the ultimate punishment.)  

	In recent years, the execution of innocent people and the continued risk 
of wrongful executions have together become an increasingly prominent theme in 
the U.S. moratorium movement.  This was, for example, one of the four central 
reasons that led the American Bar Association, in 1997, to call for a moratorium.  By contrast, the innocence question has not been a predominant consideration in the decision-making process in other countries that have ended the death penalty altogether or suspended executions.

	Professor Semel will attempt to answer the following question:  Even if 
we assume that the empirical evidence is sound, will reliance on the risk of 
wrongful executions be a successful strategy in bringing about an end to the 
death penalty in this country?  Among the subjects she will discuss are the 
moratorium in the U.S., which began in the mid-1960's and ended in 1976 after 
the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment, the difference between our 
system of "federalism" and that which exists in most other countries, what polling tells us (and does not) about the public's attitudes towards the death penalty, and the prospect that an over-emphasis on innocence will lead to more failed attempts to "fix" capital punishment rather than abolish it.