Professor Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, writes in the Daily News about the DOJ's decision to execute five death row inmates: "In truth, the death penalty has long served as a distraction, a 'law and order' wedge issue that undermines serious criminal justice reform efforts...States have therefore been abandoning the practice to spend funds instead on programs that directly attack the school-to-prison pipeline, reform community policing, and divert individuals living with mental illness and substance use disorder out of jails and into non-custodial treatment centers. The federal government should do the same."