Even if you think that you love executions — or, at a minimum, you think that they’re necessary — it’s clear that no one can defend the execution of innocent people … except that people routinely find ways to do so.

They say things like, “If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.” Or, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, “I still think he’s guilty.”

So here’s the most recent case that demonstrates, if not certain innocence, at least a serious problem with the way that the system works in Texas, the state that kills its citizens far more than any other. I suppose I’m challenging some death penalty proponent to say, out loud, that what follows is a good outcome, or at least not a terrible one.

Here you go:

A DNA test on a single hair has cast doubt on the guilt of a Texas man who was put to death 10 years ago for a liquor-store murder — an execution that went forward after then-Gov.George W. Bush’s staff failed to tell him the condemned man was asking for genetic analysis of the strand.

The hair had been the only piece of physical evidence linking Claude Jones to the crime scene. But the recently completed DNA analysis found it did not belong to Jones and instead may have come from the murder victim.

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that uses DNA to exonerate inmates and worked on Jones’ case, acknowledged that the hair doesn’t prove an innocent man was put to death. But he said the findings mean the evidence was insufficient under Texas law to convict Jones.

Full article here (HT: Abraham Bonowitz).