Well Executed

In Wisconsin have experienced the murder of a young reporter, allegedly by a man who had just been released because of new DNA evidence. If this man was wrongly charged and convicted, then he should have been set free and his subsequent actions must be addressed with the facts of the current case and not anything from his past. However, we need to accept that evil exists all around us and that innocent people are put to death everyday by individuals who have no regard for human life.

Death penalty opponents thought they'd finally found their smoking gun — the execution of an innocent man that would lead to the abolishment of capital punishment. They were conned, and they are still looking.
Roger Keith Coleman was put to death in the electric chair in 1992 for the 1981 rape and murder of his 19-year-old sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy. Miss McCoy's partially beheaded body was found in her home in the small coal-mining town of Grundy in Buchanan County, Va.

Like many cold-blooded murderers, including the liberals' beloved Tookie Williams, Coleman maintained his innocence until the very end. He graced the cover of the May 18, 1992, issue of Time magazine with the headline: "This man might be innocent. This man is due to die."

"An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight," Coleman insisted just minutes before he was executed. "When my innocence is proven, I hope America will realize the injustice of the death penalty as all other civilized countries have." That hope was also expressed by many of his supporters.

With just two weeks left in his term, Mark Warner, Virginia's term-limited governor and presidential wannabe, earlier this month ordered a re-examination of DNA evidence in the case.

Greeting the possibility of proven innocence, Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, opined: "I think it would be the final straw for a lot of people who are on the fence on the death penalty."

James McCloskey, executive director of Centurion Ministries, which had petitioned Warner to re-examine the evidence, had been fighting to prove Coleman's innocence since 1988. The two shared Coleman's final meal together.

After the new tests confirmed Coleman's guilt, McCloskey said the knowledge that Coleman had so successfully deceived him and others was like "a kick in the stomach."

The DNA tests in 1990 placed Coleman in the 2% of the population who could have produced the semen at the crime scene. Additional blood typing put Coleman with a group consisting of 0.2% of the population. His lawyers said the expert they themselves hired had misinterpreted the evidence. Turns out he hadn't.
What if Coleman had been found innocent? A miscarriage of justice, to be sure, but would it have been grounds to abolish the death penalty? The very technology that liberals hoped would prove an innocent man had been executed will help ensure no truly innocent person ever will be.

Death penalty opponents still cannot point to the actual execution of an innocent person. We do know that all murder victims are innocent. And using past errors to spare the lives of future murderers will only create more victims.

All the evidence we've seen suggests that when the death penalty has been held in abeyance, such as the de facto ban imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970s, or when executions have declined, crime and murder rates have gone up dramatically. Conversely, after executions resumed and increased in number, crime and murder rates have dropped significantly.

In a March 2005 analysis from the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, University of Chicago law professors Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule cite a study released in 2001 by three Emory University professors on capital punishment's deterrent effect.

That study examined county-level data for 3,054 U.S. counties from 1997 to 2006 and found that each death sentence and execution leads to 18 fewer murders. Sunstein and Vermeule concluded that this and other studies suggest that "a refusal to impose that penalty condemns numerous innocent people to death."

Proper administration of the death penalty saves lives. If you doubt this, just ask the family of any prison guard slain by an inmate doing life without parole. Those who would abolish or curtail capital punishment must reckon with the innocent lives that will be lost if they succeed.

There were no candlelight vigils for Wanda McCoy.