I hear often from proponents of getting rid of the Death penalty is that the consequences of Prison are reversible and this makes it a better punishment than the Death Penalty. I agree that innocents shouldn’t receive the Death Penalty and it is a sad thing that occurs. The inductive nature of trying to figure out who the murderers of people are leaves us with only fallible probabilistic conclusions. I wish to show how being released and falsely convicted can have permanent effects on your life:
Representatives for the two exonerated men said that the moment meant a lot to Mr. Aziz, and to Mr. Islam’s family. But Mr. Shanies, one of the civil rights lawyers representing them, said their convictions had a “horrific, torturous and unconscionable” effect that cannot be undone.
The two men spent a combined 42 years in prison, with years in solitary confinement between them. They were held in some of New York’s worst maximum security prisons in the 1970s, a decade that bore witness to the Attica uprisings.
Mr. Aziz had six children at the time he was convicted; Mr. Islam had three. Both men saw their marriages fall apart and spent the primes of their lives behind bars.
Even after their release, they were understood as Malcolm X’s killers, affecting their ability to live openly in society.
If you notice that the convictions of these men had consequences that couldn’t merely be undone with their freedom. Damage was done. It had irrevocable effects on their lives. So, by the logic of many abolitionists of Capital Punishment, we should not have any system of justice because you can always be punishing an innocent person.
The Council 
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