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What If We Execute the Innocent? | Experts Debate the Death Penalty
Posted
July 24, 2026
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208
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July 24, 2026
208
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10:18Now PlayingCan a system run by human beings be trusted with a punishment that cannot be undone? In the fifty years since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, DNA testing and post-conviction review have exonerated hundreds of people convicted of the most serious crimes, including some who were sentenced to death. In the end, how much error is acceptable when the sentence is irreversible?
For some people, the risk of executing an innocent person is vanishingly small in the era of modern forensic science, and it must be weighed against justice for victims and the innocent lives an enforced death penalty may protect. Others argue that wrongful convictions are not rare exceptions, pointing to junk forensic science, prosecutorial misconduct, and ineffective counsel, and that no rate of error can justify a punishment that cannot be taken back.
In this segment from our debate, Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?, moderator John Donvan puts the question neither side finds comfortable: if the death penalty's flaws could be fixed, would you change your mind? What follows is a direct exchange over the number that haunts this debate: the error rate.
Watch the full debate from 2015
Arguing YES:
Diann Rust-Tierney, Former Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project and Professor at Cardozo Law School
Arguing NO:
Robert Blecker, Professor at New York Law School
Kent Scheidegger, Legal Director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation
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