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Unjust

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Unlike many who argue against the death penalty, I have no issue with the concept. If the concept of justice is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, it follows that justice extends to a life for a life. When the crime is executing a plan to take a life, the penalty of planned execution to take a life is just. I sincerely believe there are people who earn the death penalty.

There are cases in which some who have been sentenced to death were later exonerated of their crimes by evidence or confessions by others. That should bother each of us. It should also bother each of us that poor and minority people are more likely to be executed than affluent people convicted of similar crimes. These considerations have long challenged my conscience regarding my support of the death penalty for most of my life.

Steve Earle has long been one of the most underrated artists of our era. He challenges social conscience through his extraordinary music. His ballad "Billy Austin" is from the perspective of a twenty-nine year old drifter taking us on that "long walk" with him "knowing hell is waiting there." Billy recalls that the "court appointed lawyer couldn't look me in the eye. He just stood up and closed his brief case when they sentenced me to die." Billy goes on to say, "I ain't about to tell you that I don't deserve to die, but there's twenty-seven men here, mostly black or brown and poor. Most of them are guilty, but who are you to say for sure?"

Still, I shed not one tear for the likes of Ted Bundy and William Gacy. They earn the death penalty.

However, the words Steve Earle sang took new meaning when Illinois Governor George Ryan stayed all executions pending investigations of misconduct by prosecutors. We all would like to think of prosecutors as "guardians of civil society," but they are not. They are lawyers with human natures. Among all the cases in which he could "say for sure," were cases in which evidence was manipulated or withheld. Governor Ryan went to prison in 2007 for his own scandalous behavior, and yet the corruption of some prosecutors appalled him!

We saw evidence of misconduct by prosecutors during the O.J. Simpson trial. Professional ethics were substantially compromised for spectacle, and the body of evidence was forsaken for the bodies of each other, compromising the integrity of the prosecution. We also saw evidence of misconduct during Andrea Yates' trial in Texas for drowning her five children. Prosecutors hired a well known forensics expert who

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