A recent study from Columbia University found that between 1973 and 1995, 75% of the defendants sentenced to death had their sentences overturned on appeal. Of that 75%, 7% were found not guilty on retrial, while others were given lesser sentences. In The New York Times, Ari Fleischer, a spokesperson for George W. Bush Jr. said the fact that so many death sentences were later lessened "that there is an extra level of vigilance and caution in death penalty cases, appropriately so." Then he said that the study shows "That 93 percent are still found guilty. It's not an error about their innocence. It's just a question of the appropriate punishment." The responses to this study offered by Fleischer and conservative legal brain Paul G. Cassell (who tried to get Miranda overturned earlier this year) and both false and misleading.

The study shows that we are killing innocent people and that we are incarcerating countless other innocents. The only rational response to this study would be to offer a broader and more investigative appeals process for all defendants, whether they are convicted of capital crimes, felonies, or any misdemeanor which carries a jail sentence.

That 7% of our death penalty cases have to be overturned because the defendant happens to be innocent is a horrifying figure. It doesn't show vigilance, it shows that the court system is too fallible to be trusted with people's lives. Had these 7% been sentenced to life in prison, the appeals process might have been exhausted before their innocence was established ñ they would have been left to rot.

Now, I think that the 7% error rate is intolerably high, but Fleischer disagrees. 93% of the people are still found guilty of some crime, he says. But the New York Times article about the study doesn't say what crimes the remaining 93% were convicted of when the appeals ended. How many people who were originally sentenced to death were finally convicted of crimes of association (accessory to murder) or unrelated crimes (drug dealing, theft, fraud, etc. crimes that our system enforces vigorously but which aren't capital)? Whether or not these people are guilty of some crime, the study clearly shows that 75% of the people sentenced to death are not reasonably held to be guilty of a capital crimes ñ murder of a very nasty, pre-meditated and very specific type.

Now, I hate the death penalty (I'm sure you've guessed) because I think it's barbaric and unenlightened. If you go to the Texas Department of Justice's Web site you'll see what I mean ñ they display a web page of last meal requests by the condemned. Not only does Texas deny cigarettes and alcohol to people they are going to murder, but they come as close as they can to displaying their heads on pikes by detailing all this sickness on their Web site. Texas, the state where George Bush killed 131 people (nine would be innocent if the system was wrong 7% of the time) is an excellent example of a barbaric state. They seem to like being "tough on crime" no matter how base and brutal they have to be to attain that goal.

Everyone is shocked that conservatives are turning anti-death penalty. They used to be gung ho for it. But I'm not surprised. Conservatives don't trust the government to use tax dollars for the betterment of society, which is a pretty basic trust. So how can conservatives claim that the government, which can't manage a bank account, should be handing out death sentences? Increasingly, they're making no such claim.

The Republican legislature of New Hampshire voted to abolish their state's death penalty but the Democrat governor vetoed the bill. Democrats are terrified of seeming soft on crime. But whether the reason is compassion towards even the vile among us or doubts about judicial accuracy, I think there's enough moral and factual doubt around this issue to support its abolition and reasonably, both Democrats and Republicans have good reason to be anti-death penalty.

Michael Maiello has broken some hearts in his time, be he's never killed anyone.