"Wrongful Death Executions?"

Is this opening yet another vestibule in the ongoing “death penalty debate”?

A major provocation of death penalty opponents has always been executing an innocent person for a crime they didn’t commit, but, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, that possibility has already happened at least eight times since the death penalty was reinstituted back in 1976.

One of these, the case of Larry Griffin, is back in the news with this MSNBC report yesterday. Griffin was found guilty of a drive-by shooting in 1981 and executed by the state of Missouri in 1995, but a year-long investigation by the NAACP’s Legal Defense & Education Fund in July 2005 produced evidence that strongly suggested Griffin was, in fact, not guilty, and had been wrongfully executed. That compelled the St. Louis’ prosecutor’s office to re-open the case – and those findings are expected to be complete soon.

A little less than half of the states, along with the federal government and District of Columbia, have some type of “wrongful imprisonment” provision – including Ohio, Texas, Illinois, and Missouri – compensating persons for time spent in prison for crimes they were later found not having committed. A Missouri Corrections Department spokesman in the MSNBC article, however, said he was “unaware of any provision for compensating families of those wrongfully executed.”