Former Mississippi Justice Rethinks Death Penalty

Looking back over his record on Mississippi’s Supreme Court, former Justice Oliver Diaz says he has some regrets. His first vote, for example, was “to kill an innocent man.”

He was voting against overturning the death sentence of Kennedy Brewer, who was exonerated last year when DNA testing obtained by the Innocence Project proved his innocence of a 1992 murder.

“Reflecting on my votes at the Supreme Court, I realized that there is just so much error involved in these cases that it's not worth carrying out the death penalty,” Diaz told WAPT in Jackson. “We have innocent people in Mississippi who have been sitting on death row for years.”

Read the full story and watch a video interview with Diaz

. (WAPT, 6/17/09)

Read more about Brewer’s case here

.

Read the Innocence Project's

policy on the death penalty

and learn about the 17 people exonerated after serving time on death row for crimes they didn’t commit.