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Innocence
“Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.”
– Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. 1994
Innocent People are on Death Row and May Have Been Executed
At least 138 people have been exonerated from death row since 1973, including 23 from Florida alone. (Death Penalty Information Center)
In recent years, three major U.S. newspapers – the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – reported that four executed inmates in all probability were innocent. They are Ruben Cantu of Texas, Carlos De Luna of Texas, Larry Griffin of Missouri, and Cameron Todd Willingham of Texas.
A study identified 23 instances in the last century in which a person with an extraordinarily strong case of innocence had been executed by the government. (H. Bedeau & M. Radelet, “Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases” Stanford Law Review, 1987)
Recent Cases of Possible Mistaken Execution
Virginia executed Joseph O'Dell on July 23, 1997 despite the existence of DNA evidence that could have proven O'Dell's innocence. The courts refused to consider this new evidence because Virginia law says that any evidence found after 21 days was inadmissible in proving the innocence of a convicted person.
Texas executed Jesse Jacobs on January 4, 1995 despite the prosecution’s admission that arguments they made at Jacobs’ trial were false. Jacobs was convicted after the state introduced evidence that he, rather than his co-defendant, pulled the trigger on the day of the murder. At the subsequent trial of the co-defendant, the state reversed its story and said it was the co-defendant, not Jacobs, who pulled the trigger. The prosecution vouched for the credibility of Jacobs' testimony that he did not commit the shooting and did not even know that his co-defendant had a gun. Jacobs’ co-defendant was also convicted, though he was not sentenced to death.
Texas executed Robert Nelson Drew on August 2, 1994 after refusing to give him a new hearing after another man signed an affidavit in which he confessed to the murder, thereby exonerating Drew.
Texas executed Leonel Herrera in 1993 despite compelling evidence of his innocence. A former Texas judge submitted an affidavit stating that another man had confessed to the crime for which Herrera was facing execution. Numerous other pieces of new evidence also threw doubt on his conviction. According to the Supreme Court, however, that proof was not sufficient to stop his execution because of the late stage of his appeal.
Capital Cases Involved a Heightened Risk of Error
The death penalty has become a politicized issue that is commonly used in campaigns for judges and district attorneys elected to their positions. Those judges and prosecutors are motivated to sentence as many defendants to death as they possibly can to maintain a record of being “tough on crime.”
Due to the high emotions surrounding murder cases, there is great pressure on law enforcement officials to solve homicides quickly. Such pressure may lead to misconduct by the investigators and prosecutors.
Murders frequently lack eyewitnesses, forcing the prosecutors to use less reliable sources for evidence, such as jailhouse snitches, accomplices looking for reduced sentences, and coerced confessions from defendants.
During the jury selection process, any person opposed to capital punishment is dismissed by the prosecutors. Not only do these “death-qualified” juries exclude an extremely large proportion of the population, but they are also more likely to convict during the guilt/innocence phase of the trial. (S. Gross, “The Risks of Death: Why Erroneous Convictions are Common in Capital Cases,” 1996)
Due to the meager resources provided to criminal defendants' attorneys, they often must decide whether it would be better to risk the client's conviction, yet save his life, by spending more time preparing for the sentencing phase. If this preparation occurs at the expense of an investigation that could yield evidence that would produce an acquittal, it heightens the risk of a wrongful conviction. (R. Dieter, “Innocence and the Death Penalty: The Increasing Danger of Execution the Innocent,” Death Penalty Information Center, 1997).
