toledoblade.com --

Famed author and attorney Scott Turow said yesterday he doesn't criticize anybody's views on the death penalty - in fact, for many years he claimed himself to be an "agnostic" on the issue.

But when asked to weigh the costs - both social and economic - associated with executions, he said both years ago as a member of the Illinois capital punishment commission and yesterday to a group of Toledo area lawyers and judges that the system doesn't always work.

"We will never get out of the death penalty what we as a society think we want from it without sweeping in the wrong cases," he said. "… If we have this system, there will always be the wrong cases included."

Speaking yesterday as part of the Toledo Bar Association's annual Kiroff Bench/Bar Conference, Mr. Turow was one of three speakers on the subject of the death penalty. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray and Rob Warden, executive director for the Center on Wrongful Convictions for Northwestern University Law School also spoke.

Mr. Turow, who penned seven best sellers including Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof, said he has a background both as a federal prosecutor and defense attorney. As such, he said he spent years making no conclusions on the merits of the death penalty.

But when working with a 14-member commission appointed by the Illinois governor in 2000, he found himself analyzing the role of the death penalty in the justice system. After examining each of the arguments, Mr. Turow said he made a conclusion.

"The issue really is, can we ever construct a legal system that reaches only the right cases without sweeping in the wrong case?" he said, explaining the "right cases" are the most heinous of crimes while the "wrong cases" involve innocent people or crimes that normally don't result in the death penalty. "My conclusion was that we will never be able to do that," he said.

A journalist, Mr. Warden spoke more directly about his opposition to the death penalty and shared stories that dated back to the 1800s of executed men who were found later to be innocent.

The executed man was pardoned posthumously 100 years after he was hanged, Mr. Warden said.

The most recent posthumous pardon was just days ago in South Carolina, where a pardon was granted to a man executed in 1915.

"There are three documented wrongful executions in U.S. history and many, many others, no doubt, that can't be proved," he said. "… There are huge costs socially and monetarily and there is no discernible benefit other than satisfying the hunger of retribution."

Mr. Cordray concluded the series by speaking on the death penalty process in Ohio today. Noting that a 2005 change in the law opened the possibility for an offender to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, he said fewer death penalty cases have been filed.

He attributed the lower number of cases to the fact that prosecutors and juries were given another option to "make society safer."

So far this year, he added, only one death sentence has been imposed in the state.

- Erica Blake

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