And a hell of a lot more often than people want to admit.  In fact, John McAdams seems to think that we need to be killing more murderers in jail... because "apparently" we have yet to kill an innocent man.  Now then, are there guilty people on death row?  Absolutely.  But there are also people who have been convicted of murder who are innocent.  Take for instance, this gentleman:

At age 17, I was wrongfully convicted of murder and rape, despite a negative DNA test and hair found on the body that did not match mine. My conviction was based upon a coerced, false confession, the fabrication of other evidence, prosecutorial misconduct and fraud by the medical examiner. I was cleared 16 years later - almost three years ago - when further DNA testing reaffirmed my innocence while identifying the real perpetrator, who subsequently confessed and was sentenced.

The story goes on to describe how the appeals system worked against him at every turn, despite the strong evidence of his innocence.  This case is even more interesting because one of the appeals judges was Sonia Sotomayor, who was willing to let this innocent man stay in jail because he missed an appeals deadline by four days, only because the clerk of a court gave his attorney the wrong deadline.  So much for empathy.

The fact is, once you are found guilty, nobody wants to look at your case any more, and very few people want to reconsider the decision of the jury.  The fact is, we haven't found an innocent person on death row yet because, very few people bother to look.  The sad fact is, most people would rather bury their heads in the sand about the injustices that happen in our justice system, because we don't want to think about innocent people who may be wrongfully imprisoned.

Sometimes the evidence against these people is so flimsy that it's shocking.  Take for instance this story out of Florida, where testimony from a "wonder dog" put at least 3, and possibly as many sixty men, in jail wrongfully.  The dog handler was able to convince juries that his dog was able to track a suspect to the scene of the crime montys after the crime.  This is something that is so crazy, I am shocked that a jury would have bought it.

A wonder dog helped convict all three men: a German shepherd named Harass II, who wowed juries with his amazing ability to place suspects at the scenes of crimes.

Harass could supposedly do things no other dog could: tracking scents months later and even across water, according to his handler, John Preston.

If it sounds hard to believe, there's a good reason.

After providing prosecutors with testimony for years, Preston was finally discredited by a judge who had the sense to do what others had not: test the dog for himself.

But not until after Preston and his dog had appeared in dozens of cases.

We know that at least three of those cases were overturned - after the defendants collectively spent more than a half-century in prison.

What is even scarier is that the Attorney General for the state has no real interest in going back and seeing if any other guilty people were put in jail because of this crack pot dog handler.  And we wonder why we haven't found any innocent people on death row yet?  Once again, the people who are in the best position to check, because they have the most information about the case, are not interested in checking.

For my part, I have no problem with the death penalty in theory.  I think the idea of killing someone as punishment for killing is perfectly acceptable.  However, the problem is that because of the finality of that punishment, "beyond a reasonable doubt" is no long sufficient for that punishment.  You have to be absolutely, 100% sure, otherwise the risk is too great.  And since it is nearly impossible to practically create a law where you would only send 100% guilty murderers to death, its simply safer to not do it at all.