The right man

Recently, to considerable fanfare, Virginia Governor (until this weekend) Mark Warner ordered genetic analysis to determine whether a man executed in 1992 may have been innocent. The results are in. They show that the man was present at the crime scene which, in Warner’s words, “reaffirms the verdict and the sanction.”
My understanding is that death penalty opponents have never been able to establish a case in which “the wrong man” was executed. They will undoubtedly continue their quest. But with genetic analysis now possible before the fact of execution, even finding an old case of wrongful execution would not lend much support to the case for abolishing the sanction.

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