I read Miguel’s post: Why Modern Racial Outrage is a bad joke.

One thing came to mind.

It takes on average 15 years for a person to go from conviction to execution.

During that time, every death row convict is entitled to an appeal.  In some states, the appeal is mandatory.

It’s during this process that groups like The Innocence Project can bring new evidence and seek to overturn the conviction and save an innocent man from death.  These appeals overwhelmingly help black convicts prove their innocence.

The internet is mad that Brandon Bernard was executed but Dylann Roof was not.

Bernard was convicted in 2000 and executed in 2020, lasting five years longer than the average.

Roof was convicted in 2017.  He is currently going through the appeal that he is legally entitled to.

So…

If the internet wants Roof, convicted in 2017 to be executed now, that means eliminating the appeals process that occasionally overturns a death row conviction, which disproportionately benefits black convicts.

Or they accept that Roof is going to be executed sometime between 2025 and 2035 because he’s entitled to the same long and laborious appeals process that all death penalty convect are entitled to, which (again) disproportionately benefits black convicts.

(Shorter)

Long death row wait with appeals means better justice and more wrongfully convicted (predominately black) people are let get before execution.

Short death row without appeals means more wrongfully convicted (predominately black) people are executed.

As someone who is a fan of the death penalty, I’d rather Roof get his needle ten years from now if it means that there is a better chance of an innocent man having his conviction overturned because of the process.

Call that the death penalty version of Blackstone’s corollary.

Although, what I suspect that these people really want is for black death row inmates to have infinite appeals and white death row inmates to be put down the next day, because to these people everything is about race.  But that is racist, immoral, and unconstitutional.

So I put it up to them.

If they want time for The Innocence Project to overturn the convictions of wrongfully convicted black men, they have to accept that Roof is going to be alive for another decade or so going through his appeals as well.