Opinion | The Science That Put This Man on Death Row Has Been Debunked. He’s About to Be Executed Anyway.

The Opinion video above is the final episode in a series of three videos that take a stand against the death penalty in the United States. It features Charles Don Flores, who has been on death row in Texas since 1999, awaiting execution for a murder he insists he didn’t commit. That is where we met and filmed him.

The videos are in keeping with the editorial board’s longstanding position that the death penalty is full of bias and error, morally abhorrent, futile in deterring crime and should be abolished.

The series lands at a hopeful but still challenging time in the movement to get rid of capital punishment in the United States.

The death penalty has gradually been falling out of favor with officials and the broader public alike over the past three decades, in part owing to what the Death Penalty Information Center called “society’s greater understanding about the fallibility of our legal system and its inability to protect innocent people from execution.”

The number of states that have rejected capital punishment has increased steadily since the late 1990s. Twenty-nine states have now either abolished the death penalty or have paused executions by executive action, up from 12 states in 1999.

Last year, for the first time, a Gallup poll found that more Americans believe the death penalty is administered unfairly than fairly (50 percent versus 47 percent). And the percentage of people who support the death penalty has fallen steadily since the mid-1990s, according to Gallup, dropping to 53 percent this year, a five-decade low.