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Counterclaim: On the other hand, many families who have lost loved ones describe the relief and closure they feel once the criminal is killed.
Information: Explains how studies have showed victims feelings due to death penalty.

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Counterclaim: Criminals will take the death penalty into consideration before they commit the crime.

Information: Explains how the death penalty does stop criminals, and it is a positive form of punishment for certain crimes.

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Although, for example, a mass murder walks freely with a lack of punishment and the death penalty gives criminals what they deserve.

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Reason: The death penalty does not stop criminals from committing terrible crimes

Information: Explains how the death penalty is bad, and every aspect that is unfair to criminals.

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Reason: The harsh punishment of death row criminals doesn't give the desired closure to the victims families.
Information: Murder victims families lead the opposition for death penalty.

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Reason: The death penalty does not stop criminals from committing terrible crimes.

Information: Explains how the death penalty will not rid evil, and how the death penalty will not stop criminals from committing those crimes.

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Reason: There is a possibility that the offender is innocent of the crime.
Information: Statistics show that people are wrongfully convicted on the daily.

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One of the prosecutors, dismayed by what was happening, resigned. She had managed, despite the politically fashionable tough-on-crime, kill-'em-as-quickly-as-you-can atmosphere, to hang on to the curious belief that it was wrong for the state to press a case against defendants who were not guilty.

Mr. Cruz and Mr. Hernandez benefited from the dogged efforts of an excellent defense team, the support of best-selling author Scott Turow and recent advances in DNA testing. They were exonerated and released from prison in 1995.

Their case is a chilling example of how easily the criminal justice system, without adequate safeguards, can become a force for evil. Three former prosecutors and four police officers have been indicted for obstruction of justice in the case.

Since 1973 approximately 6,000 people have been sentenced to death in the United States. The report noted that the 69 who have been released from death row during that period represent a little more than 1 out of every 100 prisoners sentenced to death. That is a hideous error rate for so horrible a punishment.

Worse, the error rate is almost certainly higher. Even when the evidence of innocence is available and compelling, it takes an extraordinary effort, usually lasting several years, to extricate someone from a death sentence. Most death row residents are poor and ignorant. They are not sympathetic figures and have little or nothing in the way of legal resources. Hardly anyone is interested in their cases.

Samuel Gross, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who has studied capital punishment extensively, has written that ''most miscarriages of justice in capital cases never come to light.''

The prisoners, for the most part, go quietly. They are marched off to the death chambers, buried and quickly forgotten.

Now, with the lust for the death penalty intensifying, the danger of executing the innocent has heightened dramatically. More people are being executed, thus increasing the potential for mistakes. At the same time, the Federal funding for death penalty resource centers, which provide legal assistance for condemned prisoners, has been completely withdrawn. And the length of time between sentencing and execution, the period in which the appeals process must run its desperate course, is being drastically curtailed.

This is a completely cruel and perverse state of affairs, more in keeping with the frenzied ignorance of the Middle Ages than the allegedly enlightened and humane spirit of a late-20th-century democracy.

What is most frightening about the center's report is what it could not provide: an account of those miserable cases, no one knows how many, in which both innocence and the inmate were buried in the name of justice.

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Bob Herbert Op-Ed column examines report by Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, which found 69 cases since 1973 in which people have been released from death row because they were improperly convicted or evidence of their innocence was uncovered after they were sentenced to die; says in current rush to execute, innocent are being put at risk (M)

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Reason: There is a possibility that the offender is innocent of the crime.
Information: In Florida around every 18 months someone is wrongfully killed.

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Reason: The harsh punishment of death row criminals doesn't give the desired closure to the victims families.
Information: Gives evidence that families feel no closure due to death penalty.

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