in a soybean field. Two mentally disabled half-brothers, Henry McCollum and Leon Brown,

quickly became targets of the investigation. After hours of interrogation, McCollum and

Brown each confessed. They were convicted and sentenced to die.

Sounds like well-served justice. Public officials in North Carolina and across the country praised

their death penalty conviction. But here's the problem: McCullom and Brown were innocent.

After 30 years on death row, DNA evidence revealed another man, who'd lived near the

scene and had a long record of sexual assaults, was the murderer. He was never investigated

during the case. We nearly executed two men for a crime did not commit.

That shows just how dangerous the death penalty really is. Even if you think

that some people deserve to die, governments make mistakes. That means having to accept

the unacceptable: innocent people will die. That can't be undone and we cannot compensate

for it the way we can with mistaken imprisonment. What if the death penalty doesn't make us

any safer? It hasn't deterred crime more than life sentence without parole,

nor have we seen a spike in murder rates following its abolishment in different states.

Innocent people can and have been wrongfully sentence to die for many reasons. Take Curtis McCarty.

He was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer's daughter. After

22 years in prison he was exonerated. He returned home to his terminally ill mother and now

adult son, and a granddaughter he'd never held. 22 years of Curtis McCarty's life were

stolen from him because a forensic chemist with the Oklahoma City Police Department either

intentionally altered or lost evidence related to the case. That same chemist participated

in over 3,000 other cases; 23 resulted in death sentences. Does that make you feel safe?

How many more innocent people should we let die before we abolish the death penalty once and for all?