"We are quite regularly murdering innocent men. An even more frequent occurrence has been the imprisonment of a person on death row for years, only to discover his/her innocence after he/she is emotionally, socially and spiritually dead from years of mental and physical agony in prison. In the last 20 years, 84 men have been wrongly convicted of a capital offense. And these are only the ones we know about and only the most recent."(Hunt) People that are accused of a crime or are sentenced to death for something they did not do should not have to be punished in any way, not even life in prison. The governors of 38 states, which still permit capital punishment, should declare a moratorium to prevent the execution of innocent people. The death penalty opponents argued as the 100th innocent prisoner was freed from death row April 8. "Our nation this week reached an infamous milestone: 100 known -- and goodness only knows how many unknown -- cases of people being sentenced to death since the reinstatement of capital punishment, for crimes they did not commit," (Leahy). This occurred following the release of Ray Krone from Arizona State Prison in Yuma. Mr. Krone was exonerated by DNA evidence. All of the 100 prisoners who have been freed from the death sentence since 1976 -- mostly after DNA evidence conclusively proved their innocence represent the exception rather than the rule in the U.S. capital punishment system, according to William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). "Meanwhile other innocent people awaiting their executions on death row may be erroneously killed," (US Envoy of Texas Inmates.) Even those of the poor and minority groups are punished too often for crimes they may not have committed because of discrimination.
Capital punishment is used against the poor and minorities far too much, because someone that does not have money is appointed a lawyer and is more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison than a defendant with money.