As more and more people on death row are found innocent based on scientific evidence, we should question the use of the death penalty in our fallible system of justice.

People who disagree on the acceptability of capital punishment should agree on one thing: innocent people shouldn't be executed.

Ray Krone spent 10 years in prison, including two years on Arizona's death row, for a sexual assault and murder he didn't commit. After a DNA test cleared him, Krone was released, becoming the 100th demonstrably innocent person to be freed from death row.

Florida is home to one of the most notorious cases in which highly advanced DNA technology has revealed a miscarriage of justice. In a case that should give pause to every death penalty proponent, Frank Lee Smith died an agonizing death from cancer in January 2000 while awaiting execution for the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl -- a crime later DNA tests showed he didn't commit. Smith had spent 14 years on death row protesting his innocence. Yet even after Smith died, prosecutors continued to object to the DNA test, saying he had been duly convicted.

Death is the only punitive measure that cannot be reversed. It should not be imposed without certitude. The U.S. Supreme Court has provided for an extra measure of due process to the accused for that very reason. But as more and more prisoners walk free because science is proving our fallibility, it is becoming obvious that our procedures are insufficient.

Republican Illinois Gov. George Ryan recognized the danger of relying on this rickety system after his state came within two days of executing Anthony Porter, an innocent man. Ryan's response was to impose a moratorium on executions and establish a panel to review the operation of the death penalty.

Every one of the 38 states that has the death penalty should go through a similar soul-searching. Innocent people land on death row for a raft of reasons: Overworked and unprepared attorneys at the trial level sometimes don't thoroughly investigate crimes for evidence of innocence. Juries often are willing to convict on unreliable eyewitness or jailhouse-snitch testimony. Prosecutors sometimes fail to turn over evidence that may tend to exonerate the defendant, in an odd calculation that says a conviction is more important than the truth.

A researcher at Columbia University found that 68 percent of death penalty cases between 1973 and 1995 were reversed due to constitutional error. In 20 percent of those cases, prosecutors had withheld evidence that would have helped the defense.

In the Krone case, his conviction rested primarily on circumstantial evidence, including the testimony of an expert who said bite marks on the victim were made by Krone's unique dental pattern. Obviously, the expert was mistaken.

The age-old question surrounding the death penalty is whether it is fairly applied. Obviously, no system can be fair when it is rife with error. DNA testing has identified 100 people so far who were told they would die at the hands of the state for a crime they didn't commit. How many more need to be discovered before there is a call to action?

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