Imagine if there had been no DNA evidence. Waller would have spent the remainder of his life in prison. I have asked before and ask again: How many people are in Texas prisons who are innocent? There must be more. We, as citizens, always trust that justice is done. And most probably agree that errors can be made even when the intentions of prosecutors and law enforcement are pure. Add a little malice and the scales start to tip in the direction every honest citizen should dread.

And I have no easy solution for the people who may be in prison based on bad evidence. My guess is that 99% of inmates will plead their innocence. And some really are.

The fact that we, as fallible humans, can make these mistakes serves to strengthen my belief that we are not capable of applying the death penalty and it should therefore be abolished.

(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

It is precisely because of the frailty of human justice that I decided many years ago that I could not support the death penalty. I had the debate with some people in 1996 when I made an aborted run for Congress (OK, it wasn’t really a run. It was a press conference announcing a run. But no real running) as a member of the Taxpayers Party. At the time there had not been the wave of overturned verdicts that we have seen since. They argued that the chance of an innocent person being convicted and losing all appeals was slim. I think we are learning that the chances are not that slim at all.

Charles Chatman is 47 and finally free. I cannot imagine the horror of being incarcerated for 25 years and being innocent. I am glad that there are organizations like the Innocence Project. But what of the others? Police and prosecutors do a great job and I am hopeful that they will reign in their peers when they see something amiss in a prosecution.