en executed but we can be certain that there were some." The United Nations, during an April 3rd 1997 press briefing, announced that its Commission on Human Rights had voted overwhelmingly to abolish the death penalty. The resolution called on member states that still maintained the death penalty to restrict the number of offenses for which the death penalty could be imposed and to consider abolishing executions completely. This opposition to the death penalty intertwined with new revelations all highlights the fact that innocent people are being wrongly sent to Death Row. "I had", said he, "come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which allow, my dear Watson, how dangerous is always is to reason from insufficient data.' Said Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventures of the Speckled Band." Whitehead 5 Since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States, 490 people have been executed while 76 have been freed from Death Row, DeWayne Wickham of USA Today points out. The Death Penalty Information Center's 1997 report on Innocence and the Death Penalty attributes these releases to scientific advancements such as DNA testing and journalistic investigations. Numerous factors such as overzealous prosecutors, deliberate actions of police, inadequate counsel, convictions based solely upon questionable eyewitness reports, laboratory error and unreliable evidence have all resulted in innocent individuals being sent to Death Row. This strengthens the call for a death penalty moratorium in Illinois. Inadequate counsel is a major contributing factor that has landed the innocent on Death Row, according to Ted Gest of the US News and World Report. According to Gest courts in southern states, the location of most American executions, are only able to find poorly paid lawyers for many defendants. Attorneys diligent enough to input 500-1000 hours in a death penalty case must often work [well] below minimum wage. According t...
