It's ironic that your newspaper should publish a letter from our most ignorant apologists for the death penalty the same week that the Innocence Project freed yet another death row inmate from being wrongfully executed ("Maryland should reinstate the death penalty," Jan. 6).
To date the Innocence Project has exonerated more than 320 people wrongly sentenced to death. The argument that the odds of an innocent person being executed are "near zero" is obviously a lie cooked up by right-wing apologists for state-sanctioned murder.
But I am willing to offer Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger and Towson professor Richard E. Vatz a chance to prove just how certain they are that innocent people are never executed. Let's make the prosecutors, judges and juries put their money where their mouths are.
If they are 100 percent sure they are sending the right person to be executed, let them stake their own lives on it. Pass a law that says every person involved in a capital punishment case is personally responsible for the outcome.
If the convicted person turns out to be innocent after all, then everyone responsible should face the same punishment — execution.
But I suspect that when given the choice to either put up or shut up, these death penalty advocates will quietly slink away.
William Smith, Baltimore