The lengths some conservatives will go to defend the American government from charges of human rights violations is simply amazing.

Today, I learned the story of James Lee Woodard. He is a man who spent 27 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.

Just out of curiosity, I decided to search townhall.com to see what conservatives have to say about the inexcuseable injustice. While I didn't find anything addressing this case in particular, I did find a jaw-dropping, Godwin defying piece about DNA exoneration from a certain lady we have all grown to know and love:

DNA evidence exonerates Hitler!
By Ann Coulter
Thursday, October 24, 2002

If you want to stop here and read no further, I personally will not hold it against you.

By Kirk Bloodsworth of The Justice Project

The day President Bush signed the Innocence Protection Act into law was one of the proudest days of my life. The law, part of the Justice for All Act of 2004, included a new program named after me: the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program.

The program provides federal grants to states to conduct DNA testing that can exonerate the innocent and help identify the truly guilty. At the time, the program's creation seemed a fitting end to a terrible chapter in my life, my 20-year struggle to prove my innocence after being convicted and sentenced to die for the brutal rape and murder of Dawn Hamilton, a 9-year-old girl I had never met.

[Promoted from the Diaries by Meteor Blades because plenty of such stories don't have such comparatively "happy endings."]

On Thursday, after spending 27 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit, Charles Chatman walked free.  The world -- or the world outside of jail, that is -- was a different place than that he had left nearly three decades ago.  After only using spoons in prison, he had to relearn how to use a knife to cut his steak.  The judge for his case even had to teach him how to use a cell phone -- a newfangled technology, for 47-year-old Chatman -- so he could call his family.  Chatman is the 15th wrongfully convicted prisoner in Dallas County who has been exonerated by DNA evidence since 2001.  

I was reading an interesting article on AlterNet discussing the ramifications of DNA and race. You would think that in 2007, we would have gotten past the point where "scientists" would still be trying to use science to devalue people by race. But I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. Prejudice and racial intolerance seems to be ingrained in many people’s psyche and no amount of scientific study or facts will change their beliefs. It is a shame that millenniums together have done nothing to increase the amount of knowledge concerning race and humanity. Ignorance is still the order of the day even among so-called "men of science".

The recent news that charges against the Duke Lacrosse players are going to be dropped should be considered good news by all. It's clear that serious abuses were committed by the prosecution and Nifong certainly deserves some sort of punishment. But while reading through the right-wing blog triumphalism, I wondered why all of the sudden the right was advocating the rights of the accused. Why focus so much emphasis on this case when there are many others like it. In fact, there are many more that are worse because the accused actually spend time in prison before their innocence is finally revealed.

Cases like this:

It has taken nearly 25 years, but with the assistance of DNA testing, the men — all African American — are proving they are indeed innocent. Two were freed from prison. A third was cleared last month, years after serving his sentence. Today, Giles is expected to clear his name and become the 13th man from Dallas County to prove with genetic testing that he was wrongly imprisoned.

With news of Molly Ivins' death joining the relentless barrage of information pummelling our brains, there's a good chance that the passing of Robert Neal Walker of New Orleans may go unnoticed on these pages.  That would not be proper.  

Say hello and farewell to a great man.

Florida and California have suspended execution by lethal injection after it took over half an hour to kill Angel Diaz.

There's no painless way to kill people and we should stop pretending that there is. Death to a healthy body requires traumatic injury. Traumatic injury brings with it a pretty darned big risk of pain.

We're looking for clinical solutions to a moral problem. We won't find them.

A little over two years ago, a high school dropout named Cameron Todd Willingham (Prisoner #999041) was executed by the State of Texas for the horrific crime of killing his three little girls--one two year-old and two one year-old twins--by setting their home on fire and letting them die in the blaze.

It was the only time on record when an execution was carried out for someone convicted of using fire as a murder weapon.

Cameron Todd Willingham, by any measure of the evidence presented at trial, was innocent of the crime for which he was executed.

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by the State of Texas in 2004. He was accused of killing his three daughters by an act of arson. A new report shows that the scientific evidence used to convict him was false. The evidence that was shown to prove that the fire was arson was wholly consistant with an accidental fire. So not only was Willingham not guilty of the crime, there was no crime at all.

Chicago Tribune Article

Robert Clark, Jr. will be released from a Cobb County, Georgia today. He has served 24 years after being convicted for rape, robbery and kidnapping. The problem? He didn't do it. And now, thanks to DNA evidence presented by The Innocence Project, his innocence has been proven conclusively. And the real culprit, Floyd Antonio "Tony" Arnold, has been identified.

Shockingly, the perpetrator was in the courtroom when Mr. Clark was sentenced to consecutive life terms. In fact, Clark pointed out to the court that Mr. Arnold should be questioned about the matter. The judge said, "Mr. Clark, you have had your trial. Just remain silent."

This is another story illustrating why I oppose the death penalty and why it is better to let 100 guilty men go free than to rob one innocent man of his freedom.