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The Innocence Project: Guilty until Proven Innocent

The call from many in the community is to deal with crime by courts imposing "stiff" sentences. In the United States the death penalty continues to be applied in many States, notably George Bushs' "old" State Texas.

We have just witnessed the rather extraordinary trial and hearing in the US as to whether the alleged 9/11 suspect, Moussaoui, ought to have been executed. We now know that the jury, after deliberating for a week, opted for a life sentence.

All too frequently it has been established that the person executed was, in fact, innocent. The State of Illinois is a good example of where the Governor stopped all executions in the light of overwhelming evidence that innocent people had been executed.

Enter the Innocent Project. It has taken on the task of establishing, post facto, that those determined to be guilty, were actually innocent. Read today's rather fascinating article about the Project from The Independent here - and how the work being undertaken is impacting on the continued "use" of capital punishment in the USA.

As coincidence will have it, ABC tonight screened a documentary "Saving Andrew Mallard" - the saga of a man wrongly convicted and who spent 12 years in jail, and would have remained there, but for the dedication and support of his family, an investigative journalist, an MP and a number of lawyers. Read an article on ABC Television about the documentary here.

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