Chapter 7 Blood is priceless, it's not too late to make up for it

According to newspaper reports, Nie Shubin, a young man in Hebei, was wrongly convicted of rape and murder ten years ago. This case brought before us the question of how to avoid killing innocent people by mistake.In recent years, such problems have plagued the United States as well. In Baltimore, Maryland, a man named Kirk Brattleworth was accused of raping and killing a nine-year-old girl in 1984.The case went to trial, and a jury found Bratterworth guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death.He always claimed that he was wronged, but the police station firmly believed that they had caught the real murderer.

Although there is no direct evidence, the police believe that the circumstantial evidence is strong. Two boys witnessed the suspect near the crime scene and identified Bratterworth.He appealed, and the appeals court ordered a lower court to retry the case, which upheld the original verdict. He wrote letters to everyone he could from prison, from members of Congress to the President of the United States, but got no response.He was reading in his cell, and he read that the British police used DNA to test suspects, which is a new technology.It gave him hope, knowing that on the pants of the murdered girl, there was a drop of semen left by the murderer, which was examined by the FBI at the time of the murder, but DNA technology was not available at the time.

In 1992, Brattleworth's lawyers requested that the pants of the slain girl be sent to Ed Blake, widely regarded as the father of DNA testing in the United States.The lawyer paid $10,000 out of his own pocket for this, since Brattleworth himself was left with nothing.Fortunately, nine years after the incident, all evidence, including the victim's clothes, has been well preserved.The test results showed that the semen on the victim's pants had nothing to do with him. According to the pre-negotiated conditions between the lawyer and the state attorney, this evidence was sent to the FBI laboratory, tested again, and the same result was obtained again.State attorneys dropped the charges. In June 1993, he walked out of the prison that held him for nine years.The state awarded him $300,000 for lost income over those nine years.

Brattleworth was the first person in the United States to use DNA technology to recover his innocence from the death row. The judicial circle was shocked, and the same thought crossed everyone's mind, just as Brattleworth's lawyer said: "If we don't have DNA technology, what will happen?" He will never be able to reverse the case.In the years without this technology, have there been the same innocent people who were wrongly convicted, wrongly killed, and wrongly imprisoned for life?The answer is self-evident. In the early history of the United States, the courts have always been cautious in imposing the death penalty. The 1930s was the peak period, when more than 165 people were executed each year.The death penalty was abolished in the early 1970s, but the Supreme Court reaffirmed its legality in a 1976 ruling.Thirty-eight of the fifty U.S. states now have the death penalty.Death sentences are often followed by lengthy appeal procedures, taking an average of ten years to exhaust all judicial appeal procedures.After the Brattleworth case, the awaiting inmates in death row had an extra opportunity to be retested with DNA.Some have had their convictions overturned by DNA testing after years of incarceration.

The facts are astounding: despite court testimony, neutral jury verdicts, and despite everyone's acknowledgment that death sentences matter, wrongful killing can still happen.From the 1970s to 2000, nearly 100 people in the United States were sentenced to death and then found out that they were wrongly sentenced.A study by Columbia Law School investigated thousands of criminal cases and found that in seven out of ten cases, serious mistakes had occurred.Most of these errors are due to the fact that the defendant was not professionally assisted by a lawyer of a qualified standard. In 1998, Anthony Porter, a death row inmate in Illinois, spent 16 years in death row and exhausted all judicial procedures. Fifty hours before his execution, some journalism college students investigated the case. New evidence was discovered during the case, and finally his innocence and freedom were recovered.The governor of Illinois said there was clearly a major flaw in the state's criminal justice system and ordered a moratorium on executions to prevent wrongful killings.

It was under such circumstances that in the spring of 2000, cross-party lawmakers led by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Representative Ray LaHood proposed the "Innocents Protection Act" to the Senate and House of Representatives respectively. ".The main contents of the bill are: 1. Use DNA testing technology to allow detainees who have been convicted of a crime to have the opportunity to re-test DNA evidence; 2. Provide qualified professional lawyer assistance for criminal defendants; 3. Offenders provide compensation. In October 2004, the Protection of the Innocents Act, known as the Justice for All Act, came into effect.This bill includes the regulation of DNA testing; providing funds for improvement, training and improving the quality of defense in major criminal cases, especially in death penalty cases; and providing assistance to the families of victims.The bill also provides $25 million over the next five years for DNA retesting of convicted detainees.The program, named after Bratworth, is called the "Kirke Bratworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program."Brattleworth (Bloodsworth) can be interpreted as "the value of blood" in English.He used his experience of getting out of the death cell to prove that blood is priceless and human life is priceless.Only by mending the situation after a dead sheep can we be worthy of the wronged souls of the past."This legislation is very important because it helps prevent innocent people from being sent to death row, helps catch the truly guilty, and helps prevent new wrongful convictions," Bratworth said.

I think that the unjust murder of Hebei youth Nie Shubin should also lead us to review the judicial system, otherwise, the society will feel sorry for him and his family.