Michael Brown and Ferguson, Missouri, along with Eric Garner, the Staten Island man killed by a police choke hold, have put questions about police misconduct squarely in the public square recently—in Ferguson, not just in the death of the unarmed teen but also in a long history in the county of harassing minorities and shaking them down for money to finance police operations, and in the unsettling pictures of police snipers aiming at demonstrating crowds from tank-like military vehicles. Brown and Garner are only the most visible of countless cases in which these powers have corrupted, and in which the victims are disproportionately minorities but include plenty of non-minorities as well.

Brown's case ignited a major national debate, but other incidents happen every day. Last year, we had the horrific case of John Geer in Springfield, Virginia, shot as he stood, unarmed, inside the front doorway of his house after a minor domestic dispute; when his children and other family tried to administer aid, police allegedly blocked them while he bled to death. A year later, there has been no explanation, no charges filed, no communication from prosecutors or police to his family, which has sued. There are many others, including those where police fired dozens or hundreds of bullets at individuals sitting in their cars.

Shooting deaths are obviously horrific. At the same time and for good reason, we cut police a lot of slack in confrontations; they are in the line of fire, and many officers are killed on duty. But there need to be sanctions for those who abuse their power over life and death, or who clearly overreact. And common police protocols where shooting to kill is the norm, and other means to disable individuals who are threats or perceived threats are not actively encouraged, need rethinking and redrawing.

But cases like Brown, Garner, or Geer, though way too prevalent, are not the only big problem here. The new power of DNA evidence along with the remarkable tenacity of the Innocence Project and other comparable efforts have uncovered hundreds of cases of wrongful imprisonment—and some of wrongful capital punishment. Consider the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. From the mesmerizing account in 2009 by David Grann in The New Yorker to the excellent story in The Washington Post by Maurice Possley of the Marshall Project, it is compellingly clear that Willingham was wrongfully executed in Texas for deliberate arson that killed his wife and children, a crime he did not commit. It is also clear that from prosecutor John H. Jackson, who allegedly manipulated a jailhouse informer to turn on Willingham, to the indifference, at best, of parole authorities and Governor Rick Perry, to exculpatory evidence, there was a shocking level of unconcern or worse about putting to death a man whose guilt was at least in question.