Ignoring Mistakes
No one likes admitting they were wrong but eventually we all have to face the reality that we have made mistakes. Everyone except the Oklahoma Legislature, that is. Rather than acknowledging mistakes, learning from them and seeking to prevent them from occurring again our legislators would rather ignore them in hopes that no one will notice.
Both last year and again in 2007 Senator Susan Paddack, D-Ada, introduced legislation to create an Oklahoma “Innocence Commission” to investigate what went wrong resulting in innocent persons being convicted of crimes they did not commit.
And like a whipped dog, the Oklahoma Legislature could not run away from the idea fast enough.
Last year Paddack’s bill to create the “Innocence Commission” passed the Senate by a 25-20 vote but was not heard in the House. This year was even worse, as the Senate Judiciary Committee, under co-chairs Sen. James Williamson, R-Tulsa, and Sen. Richard Lerblance, D-Hartshorne, did not even consider the bill.
Why is it that our legislators refuse to establish an investigative commission to determine how and why Oklahomans are falsely convicted of crimes?
Are they scared of what such a commission might reveal?
Or do they simply not care that some Oklahomans spend many years in prison, some on death row, for crimes they did not commit?
George Santayana wrote in “Reason in Common Sense”, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
He must have been thinking of the Oklahoma Legislature at the time…
