Death for the Death Penalty?

In theory, the death penalty for capital crimes should work.

An accused killer takes the life of an innocent and is put to death to protect the rest of society.

The only problem is that theory has little to do with real life.

Prejudicial prosecution; coerced confessions; corrupted informants; botched lawyering; and, yes, even racism, have turned the death penalty, as it is now applied in the United States, into a very dirty, inaccurate business.

Let's cross our fingers and pray that with a little luck, a death knell for the death penalty will soon be sounded, especially in light of the sad case of Romell Broom, who would have been executed in Ohio's death chamber on Sept. 15 but for his weak veins.

You read that right.

An execution team of 12 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility spent several hours trying unsuccessfully to find a viable vein in Broom for a lethal injection. Gov. Ted Strickland was forced to issue a seven-day reprieve of the execution.

A second execution attempt was scheduled for Sept. 22, but a U.S. District Judge issued a temporary restraining order delaying it until a new motion is filed with the Ohio Supreme Court.

Broom's defense attorney is arguing another execution attempt would violate state law, because Broom was forced to suffer a slow and painful execution attempt. Ohio is the only state that has a statute that requires a quick and painless execution.

I'll let others debate that point, because I'm not going to shed any tears for Broom, who was convicted of raping and murdering 14-year-old Tryna Middleton on Sept. 21, 1984. Let him rot in prison, pick up trash, clean out sewers or do anything else that can benefit the public good in even a small measure.

Exonerated by DNA

Byron Halsey
Halsey spent more than two decades in state prison before being exonerated by DNA testing for the brutal rape and murder of two New Jersey children. Now he's filing a federal civil rights suit.

AP / The Star-Ledger

Alton Logan
Logan spent 26 years in prison for fatally shooting a security guard in 1983. In 2007, an attorney for another man who admitted that he had committed the crime came forward with the truth. He was officially declared innocent in April 2009.

Antonio Beaver
He served more than a decade in prison because blood found on an attack victim was not presented in his trial. Once testing proved him not guilty, all charges were dropped in 2007. Unfortunately, he landed back in jailafter crashing his car while drunk.

Innocence Project

Calvin Johnson
DNA from a rape kit did not match Johnson's. He was set free in 1999 after nearly 16 years in prison. He later wrote a book about his ordeal.

John Bazemore / AP

Darryl Hunt
Darryl Hunt was convicted twice of a 1984 North Carolina murder. After DNA results proved his innocence in 1994, it still took 10 years of legal appeals to exonerate him.

Innocence Project

Donte Booker
After serving 15 years on a rape conviction, Booker was exonerated on Feb. 9, 2005, after DNA evidence on the victim's clothing pointed to someone else. In 2007 he was accused of a second rape, of which he was found not guilty by a jury in 2008.

Innocence Project

Floyd Brown
Brown was freed in 2007 after 14 years behind bars. Authorities locked up the mentally disabled man without a trial in 1993 and lost or destroyed key criminal evidence that could have freed him years ago.

Innocence Project

Herman Atkins
Atkins was convicted in 1988 of robbery, rape, forcible oral copulation and for using a handgun. After test results were returned, Atkins was released from prison in February 2000, after spending 12 years in prison. He has since gone to college, married, and dedicated his life to helping those who have been wrongly convicted.

Innocence Project

James Lee Woodard
Woodard spent more time in prison than any other wrongfully convicted inmate in U.S. history -- 27 years. DNA testing in the murder and rape of his girlfriend ultimately overturned his conviction in 2008.

James Waller
In 2006, 23 years after his conviction of rape, DNA from a rape kit that had never been presented was found not to belong to Waller. He was pardoned by Texas governor Rick Perry in 2007.

Innocence Project / AP

The Broom case should be used as a lever to overturn the death penalty nationwide.

I hope some smart anti-death penalty lawyers use the case to show how absurd, unfair and unconstitutional the death penalty is.

Just a visit to the respected Innocence Project website, with its stories of death row inmates being freed by DNA evidence, should chill the spine of any thinking person. (And be sure to read the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a white Texas man who was put to death even though all of the evidence says he was innocent.)

Besides being applied to innocent people, another fatal flaw of the death penalty is that it is applied so unequally. Often times, the important question of whether someone gets the death penalty is determined by something as simple as where the crime was committed.

Get convicted of murder in New Mexico, and you are likely facing a long prison stretch. Do that same crime in neighboring Texas, and you may have to kiss your behind goodbye.

So let us hope that the miserable life and crime of Mr. Bloom brings at least one positive to the country: the end of the unfair death penalty.