The courtroom of Judge David D. Egan of the State Supreme Court in Rochester must be a busy place. The 60-year-old defendant appearing in his courtroom this week, Freddie Peacock, was present to have his conviction for rape vacated as a result of DNA testing that confirmed his innocence.

Peacock's arduous legal journey had taken him through five wasted years in prison and a series of six unsuccessful appeals before his innocence was firmly established. According to The New York Times (02/05), in the five-minute court hearing before Judge Egan (it must have been a crowded docket), there wasn't even a whisper of an apology from the judge or the prosecutor directed to Mr. Peacock. Five minutes of court time for five years in prison.

Freddie Peacock was assisted in his legal victory by the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. It is a non-profit group that harnesses DNA evidence, the science of genetic fingerprinting, to assist the wrongfully convicted in their pursuit of exoneration. The grey, drab room lined with cubicles where the Project is located in Lower Manhattan is hardly inspiring. The only indication that it isn't an accountant's office is a bulletin board where newspaper articles are neatly posted highlighting the latest success of the Innocence Project. The board has to be changed frequently; Freddie Peacock was the 250th individual in America to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Over 50 of the these cases were for people serving sentences for murder.

The rescue efforts of the Innocence Project for the wrongfully convicted was expressly relied upon by the Supreme Court of Canada in a decision (United States v. Burns) in which the court ruled that as a condition of extradition, the Minister of Justice must obtain an assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed. In renouncing the death penalty, the court also referred to a series of Canadian cases in which DNA evidence was eventually used to overturn wrongful convictions. The court asserted (para. 102) that "had capital punishment been imposed, there would have been no one to whom an apology and compensation could be paid in respect of the miscarriage of justice... and no way in which Canadian society with the benefit of hindsight could have justified to itself the deprivation of human life in violation of the principles of fundamental justice".

The documented cases of wrongful convictions in this country becomes particularly relevant in light of the recent Angus Reid survey reporting that 62 per cent of Canadians favoured the death penalty for murder and about half of that precentage supported a similar punishment for rapists. The results marked a dramatic increase from previous polling conducted only a few years earlier.

I would suggest that a fairer question on the survey would have inquired if Canadians support the death penalty for murderers and rapists acknowledging that the judicial system occasionally makes mistakes.

Consider the case of William Mullins-Johnson, who was falsely convicted for the first-degree murder of his four-year-old niece. He spent 12 years in a federal penitentiary before he was released and later exonerated. Mullins-Johnson would most certainly have been executed if capital punishment were securely in place in Canada. He was the victim of the Titanic of wrongful convictions: the Dr.Charles Smith debacle.

Proponents of the death penalty could accurately point out that it is only the rare murder case where a jury reached the wrong result. However, the paucity of miscarriages of justice in murder cases in this country doesn't serve to eradicate the problem. As the Supreme Court of Canada noted in the Burns decision: "...where capital punishment is sought, the state's execution of even one innocent person is one too many."

The goal of not convicting a single innocent person is a dedicated feature of our system of justice. However, it isn't a pristine and perfect system. And when a miscarriage of justice does occur on a rare occasion, the justice system must be accountable for its errors, admit its frailties and offer contrition and appropriate compensation to its victims. These essential qualities were sorely lacking in Judge Egan's courtroom in Rochester. Freddie Peacock never received the sincere apology that he deserved. At least some measure of justice was achieved. An innocent person's good name was restored.

Next Week: Encouraging Signs For Conrad Black