In the propaganda for abolishing the death sentence the recital of numerous miscarriages of justice commits the same error and implies the same callousness :What is at fault in our present system is not the sentence but the fallible procedure.Capital cases being one in a thousand or more, who can be cheerful at the thought of all the "revocable" errors?What the miscarriages point to is the need for reforming the jury system, the rules of evidence, the customs of prosecution, the machinery of appeal.The failure to see that this is the great task reflects the sentimentality I spoke of earlier, that which responds chiefly to the excitement of the unusual.A writer on Death and the Supreme Court is at pains to point but that when that tribunal reviews a capital case, the judges are particularly anxious and careful.What a left-handed complimentto the highest judicial conscience of the country!Fortunately, some of the champions of the misjudged see the issue more clearly.Many of those who are thought wronglyconvicted now languish in jail because the jury was uncertain or because a doubting governor commuted the death sentence.Thus Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard, Jr., convicted of his wife's murder in the second degree is serving a sentence that is supposed to run for the term of his natural life.
