It's like the plot in Dogma; when a Catholic church declares that anyone who passes through its gates will be forgiven for any sins, and if the two disgraced angels go through, the universe (of which everything revolves around god being infallible) will end.
He's still on death row because judges, prosecutors, and the public all view our criminal justice system as infallible in a multitude of ways, and also one of the cornerstones of our democracy.
Letting him go would admit that in probably one of the worst ways possible (for an individual), the CJS is not infallible at all.
It doesn't help that the system is designed to be punitive, not reformative (see: the prisoner exception in the amendment banning slavery. We're one of very few industrialized nations where prisoners can be used as slave labor.)
Electing district attorneys also doesn't help; everything they do is aimed at their next election.
It used to be that groups like The Innocence Project would present DAs with conclusive DNA evidence that the person in jail wasn't responsible, and the DAs would refuse to do anything about it, because in the next election their opponent would be shouting about how they "let a convicted killer go."
He's still on death row because judges, prosecutors, and the public all view our criminal justice system as infallible in a multitude of ways, and also one of the cornerstones of our democracy.
Letting him go would admit that in probably one of the worst ways possible (for an individual), the CJS is not infallible at all.
It doesn't help that the system is designed to be punitive, not reformative (see: the prisoner exception in the amendment banning slavery. We're one of very few industrialized nations where prisoners can be used as slave labor.)
Electing district attorneys also doesn't help; everything they do is aimed at their next election.
It used to be that groups like The Innocence Project would present DAs with conclusive DNA evidence that the person in jail wasn't responsible, and the DAs would refuse to do anything about it, because in the next election their opponent would be shouting about how they "let a convicted killer go."