one of five caretakers who became suspects after a 16-year-old white girl was murdered in a Texas high school. Unfortunately for Brandley, he was the only black man out of the five caretakers. When a Texas police officer interviewed Brandley and another caretaker, the officer supposedly said, "One of you is going to hang for this." He then turned to Brandley and said, "Since you're the nigger, you're elected." Hairs on the victim's body were later found to prove that a white killer was to blame. Brandley spent 10 years on death row before his sentence was overturned (Gross 9). The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty estimates that 23 people who have been executed in the United States were innocent of their crime (9). How can innocent men and women end up on death row? Prosecutors, who are elected officials, are under intense pressure to find and convict the killer. Once a suspect has been caught and assumed to be the killer, the pressure is greatly reduced. Then the prosecutor has to convict the killer. This process is relatively easy because the accused killer is usually not wealthy enough to hire a good attorney. The county in which the trial is held appoints a public defender to represent the defendant. The taxpayers pay this attorney, not the defendant. Whether he wins or loses, the public defender will be paid the same amount of money, which is a small amount. This is where the problem lies. A person's life is at stake, and the public defender is the accused person's only hope of winning the trial. The defender has basically no incentive to win the case other than that a victory will look better on his record than a loss. In Alabama, the salary cap for a public defender is $2,000 ("The Cruel and Ever More Unusual Punishment" 95). This is definitely not a sufficient amount of money to be paid to defend someone's life. A trial could be considered unfair for many reasons. If the attorneys are not qualified to try the case...
