Two nationally known lawyers debated the issue of capital punishment on campus in February — just eight days before Ohio executed its first death-row inmate since 1963.
A Grover Center crowd of more than 1,200 attended the Kennedy Lecture Series debate b etween law professor Barry Scheck, the DNA expert on the defense team for the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, and Susan Estrich, a law professor and syndicated columnist.
Estrich, who teaches law at the University of Southern California and served as a legal consultant for NBC’s “Today” show during the Simpson trial, said she believes the death penalty is fair and just.
“It was when I had a child that I truly realized the value of human life,” she said. “It made me understand that people can take lif e so cruelly, and those people deserve to die.”
Scheck, who oversees the Innocence Project initiative that uses DNA evidence to assist wrongly convicted inmates, argued that the death penalty is not administered fairly.
“Since the death penalty was reinstated (nationally) in 1974, for every seven people who have been executed, there has been one person who was proved to be innocent,” he said. “How can we defend a system that is so wrong on the issue of guilt or innocence?”
Ironically, the deb ate came just a little more than a week before convicted killer Wilford Berry became the first person executed in Ohio in 36 years. Berry, 36, asked to waive his legal appeals and be executed. Death penalty opponents argued that he was mentally ill and unable to understand the ramifications of his decision. Berry died by lethal injection Feb. 19 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.
The lecture series tackles another timely topic on April 21 when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh talks about whether the private lives of public officials are relevant to their roles as public servants.
