On April 25, federal judge Jed Rakoff said that the death penalty created "an undue risk that a meaningful number of innocent persons" were being executed. Supporting his statement with the findings of a Columbia University study done last February, the judge pointed to the large number of people who have been exonerated through the use of DNA and other evidence. The Columbia University study sought to explain the fact that 68 percent of all death penalty cases between 1973 and 1995 ended up in new trials or sentencing hearings.

The problem of wrongful convictions went well beyond DNA testing, said Rakoff, noting that at least 20 people had been released from death row in cases in which testing was unavailable or irrelevant. "The inference is unmistakable that numerous innocent people have been executed whose innocence might otherwise have been similarly established," said the judge.

The federal judge’s order to the prosecutors to reply to his decision arose during the case of two men scheduled to go on trial in September on charges of killing a cop informant. The two could face the death penalty. Last October Attorney General John Ashcroft overturned the decision of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Mary Jo White, to not seek the death penalty in the case.

In their May 15 reply the prosecutors said that the 12 DNA-based exonerations referred to by Rakoff were cases handled by the states, and that, in the words of the New York Times, "none of the 31 people sentenced to death in federal courts since 1994 had had their convictions overturned."

More than 700 people have been put to death by state courts in the past 25 years. Two people have been executed by federal court since 1994 when the federal death penalty was reinstated.

The debate is unfolding in the context of growing opposition to state-sponsored executions among working people in the United States. The growing body of evidence revealing the true anti-working class character of the death penalty has made it difficult for the capitalist rulers to continue justifying the use of this weapon of terror against working people.  
 
 
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