The average time these prisoners spent on death row was seven years. 1 Efforts by courts and legislatures to speed up the time between conviction and execution mean that other prisoners likely have been and will be executed before their innocence is discovered. Porter's story is a painful reminder that all too often, a prisoner's innocence is discovered only because of the extraordinary and fortuitous efforts of people outside the system. 2 Porter's case is symptomatic of this crisis in death penalty jurisprudence. Like 90 percent of those facing capital charges, Porter was too poor to hire his own attorney.
Most indigent defendants suffer from grossly inadequate legal representation.
4 Many states continue to execute people who are mentally retarded or who were under age 18 at the time of their crimes or both - even in the face of nearly unanimous international condemnation. Unfairness and mistakes in the application of the death penalty are undermining public confidence in the criminal justice system and fueling the call for a moratorium. More than 625 groups and tens of thousands of people across the US are now calling for an immediate halt to executions. Among them is the ABA, which led the way in early 1997. Opinion polls show that many people in the US embrace alternatives to a death sentence if other means are taken to ensure that the guilty do not further endanger the innocent.