The possible execution of an innocent person does not make the federal death penalty system unconstitutional according to a U.S. appeals court Tuesday.
The decision by the three-judge panel upholds the Supreme Court's earlier rulings and struck down a recent decision by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff that said the system did not grant due process to individuals and was in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
That part of the Constitution reads: \No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.""
Rakoff cited the recent exoneration of inmates convicted of capital punishment by DNA analysis as one of the major reasons that two heroin dealers who murdered a government informant could not be sent to death row.
The decision was then appealed by the federal government, and the panel made up of Judges Jose A. Cabranes, Ralph K. Winter Jr. and Joseph M. McLaughlin deferred to the Supreme Court.
According to UW-Madison law emeritus Professor Gordon Baldwin, Rakoff's argument is useful in certain situations.
""It does work in specific cases,"" he said. ""But, I don't think there is any support for the argument that because we had some innocent people convicted that means the whole system is unconstitutional.""
In fact, the judicial system does not view convicting a innocent person as a violation of due process, according to UW-Madison political science Professor Howard Schweber.
""The claim is not that any particular process was violated or particular right was violated, they just got it wrong,"" he said. ""The difficulty lies in that we have the tendency ... to equate due process with justice. But this Supreme Court in particular has taken great pains to say that those are not the same thing.""
Schweber added he believes the judicial system should do everything within its power to make certain of its convictions.
""It's not a due process argument exactly, it's more a policy argument,"" he said. ""We have structural and systemic reasons to be so deeply suspicious of the adequacies and fairness of death penalty adjudication that we ought to have extra-special motivations if technology gives us the chance to do so, to revisit those convictions to be absolutely sure.""
The debate is only one of many that has become the federal courts, something Baldwin said he does not see abating in the near future.
""The second argument is, even if you have given full due process, that 'evolving standards of decency' make the death penalty inappropriate,"" he said. ""It's a continuing debate and it is going to go on as long as the death penalty is in existence.\
