ABSTRACT
Introduction .......................................................................................................... 61 Methodology ......................................................................................................... 63 Qualitative Results ............................................................................................... 65
Evidence That Casts Doubt about the Defendant’s Guilt ..................... 65 Strong Evidence Pointing to Another Suspect .......................... 65 Strong Alibi .................................................................................... 66
Causes of the Wrongful Convictions ....................................................... 66 Witness Perjury ............................................................................. 66 Police Misconduct/False Confessions ........................................ 68 State Suppression of Evidence ...................................................... 68 Ineffective Attorneys ..................................................................... 69 Eyewitness Misidentification ....................................................... 69
Factors That Led to the Executions Despite Doubts about the Defendant’s Guilt ........................................................................... 71 Procedural Bars to Courts/New Evidence Not
Entertained by the Courts ............................................ 71 Political Pressure to Execute ........................................................ 71
Quantitative Results ............................................................................................. 72 The Geography of Executions of the Innocent ....................................... 73 Executions of the Innocent over Time .................................................... 73 Race and Executions of the Innocent ...................................................... 75
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 76 Notes ...................................................................................................................... 76 References .............................................................................................................. 77 Cases Cited ............................................................................................................ 79
Recent public opinion polls suggest that although a majority of Americans favor the death penalty, support has significantly declined since 1994 (Saad, 2005). The issue of potential executions of the innocent may be partly responsible for this result. A study conducted by Unnever and Cullen (2005) found
that support for capital punishment was significantly lower among respondents who believed that an innocent person had been executed in the past five years. Recent developments throughout the country and media attention devoted to the issue may have played a significant role in the change in public opinion. In fact, it was concern about wrongful convictions that figured most prominently in Illinois Governor George Ryan’s decision to declare a moratorium on executions in 2000 and, more dramatically, in his decision to empty Illinois’ death row through a blanket commutation in January 2003 (Wilgoren, 2003). Additionally, numerous states have formed commissions to study innocence cases, including Pennsylvania, California, North Carolina, and New Jersey (Raffaele, 2006; Robertson, 2006; Weinstein, 2006a,b). In early January 2007, the New Jersey commission recommended abolition of the state’s death penalty and replacement with the alternative sentence of life without parole. Among the reasons cited for this decision was the “risk of executing the innocent” (DeFalco, 2007; Santi, 2006). Finally, Judge Carolyn Dineen King of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit publicly expressed serious concerns about the risk of executing the innocent. She stated that “profoundly troubling is the risk that an innocent man will be executed.” Her assessment of the death penalty is that it “remains a human endeavor with a consequent risk of error that may not be remediable” (King, 2006).
