Shocking Number Of Innocent People Sentenced To Death, Study Finds

[deleted-05292014 331]

More than 4 percent of inmates sentenced to death in the United States are probably innocent, according to a study published Monday that sent shock waves across the anti-death penalty community.

What the researchers call a "conservative estimate" about the number of wrongfully convicted death row inmates is more than double the percentage of capital defendants who were exonerated during more than three decades that were studied. That means innocent people are languishing behind bars, according to the study.

“The great majority of innocent people who are sentenced to death are never identified and freed," said Samuel Gross, lead author of the study and a University of Michigan Law School professor, in a statement. "The purpose of our study is to account for the innocent defendants who are not exonerated."

The four authors reviewed the outcomes of the 7,482 death sentences handed down from 1973 to 2004. Of that group, 117, or 1.6 percent, were exonerated.

But with enough time and resources, the authors concluded that at least 4.1 percent of death row inmates would have been exonerated. In other words, more than 200 other prisoners would have been cleared during those three decades.

They arrived at that number using survival analysis, a statistics tool commonly used in medicine to evaluate the effectiveness of new treatments.

“This impressive study points to a serious flaw in our use of the death penalty,” said Richard Dieter, Death Penalty Information Center executive director, after seeing the report. “The ‘problem of innocence’ is much worse than was thought."

The article -- titled the "Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced to Death" -- was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

A key reason why all wrongly convicted defendants are not vindicated is that many win appeals reducing their sentences of death to life in prison. After that, proving their innocence is not as vigorously pursued, the authors argued.

From 1973 to 2004, more than 35 percent of death row inmates were spared from capital punishment, but remained incarcerated, the study said. If inmates no longer facing execution received the same kind of defense as those on death row, the authors concluded that the percentage of exonerations would surge.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/28/innocent-death-penalty-study_n_5228854.html

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/23/1306417111

[Janelle2002 3,865]

Believable.

[deleted-05292014 331]

Believable.

I couldn't imagine being arrested, convicted, AND sentenced to death for a crime I did not commit.

Unfortunately, the only people in this country who are executed are poor people. They don't have the resources to prove their innocence. So we have State sponsored executions of poor people. How is that different from China, North Korea, Iran? We just house them for 20 years longer before pulling the switch.

[Janelle2002 3,865]

I couldn't imagine being arrested, convicted, AND sentenced to death for a crime I did not commit.

Unfortunately, the only people in this country who are executed are poor people. They don't have the resources to prove their innocence. So we have State sponsored executions of poor people. How is that different from China, North Korea, Iran? We just house them for 20 years longer before pulling the switch.

We are no different. The only difference is we have a systematic way of doing it that says "justice" is being served. As long as someone goes down for some crime is what is important. The lives ruined in the process does not matter.

[belinda63 3,038]

http://www.innocenceproject.org/ Here are some of the stories of the wrongfully convicted. There was also a movie a number of years ago with gary sinise? maybe and some other big names about a murder and his dealings with the legal system. Pretty much it has been found that even if your attorney sleeps during your trial it is not grounds for a new one. Combine that with the "accidental" failure to turn over all the information about the case as well as jail-house snitches and it is no wonder.

Mostly the poor this happens to since they have to rely on public defenders who have a huge case load and are only required to close the case. They are not judged on the outcome since it is assumed everyone they represent is guilty.

[scandal 951]

More than 4 percent of inmates sentenced to death in the United States are probably innocent,

Could be worse.

Could be Egypt.

Egypt sentences 683 to death in latest mass trial of dissidents

MINYA, Egypt — An Egyptian court in the southern city of Minya sentenced 683 people to death Monday in the most recent of a series of mass trials that have alarmed the international community.

The ruling came one month after 529 people were sentenced to death in a similar mass trial in the same courtroom, and it coincided with a visit to Washington by Egypt’s foreign minister in an effort to smooth relations between the United States and one of its most significant allies in the Middle East.

The Obama administration quickly condemned the ruling, saying that it defied “even the most basic standards of international justice.”

“Egyptian leaders must take a stand against this illogical action and dangerous precedent, recognizing that the repression of peaceful dissent will fuel the instability and radicalization that Egypt says it wishes to prevent,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

Those sentenced to death were all alleged supporters of the ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who was toppled last summer in a military coup. They included Mohammed Badie, the “supreme guide” of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which captured the lion’s share in Egypt’s first democratic elections, held in 2012.

All but 37 of the previous death sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment, under a review by Egypt’s highest religious authority, it was announced Monday.

The most serious charge in Monday’s case was the killing of a single police officer during clashes between security forces and Morsi’s supporters across the nation last summer. The clashes broke out after Egyptian security forces launched deadly raids on pro-Morsi protest camps in the capital.

The defendants were barred from attending their own trial, which lasted only a few minutes, defense attorneys said. It was unclear what evidence the court had used to convict the men, who were described by families and defense attorneys as ordinary townspeople.

Defense attorneys said they would appeal the verdict. But anger was palpable in Minya and the nearby village of Al-Edwa, home to nearly all of the 683.

[Janelle2002 3,865]

It is truly sad when you have to plead guilty to something you didn't do.

Leading Causes of Wrongful Convictions

These DNA exoneration cases have provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events, but arise from systemic defects that can be precisely identified and addressed. For more than 15 years, the Innocence Project has worked to pinpoint these trends. Many wrongful convictions overturned with DNA testing involve multiple causes.

Eyewitness Misidentification Testimony was a factor in 73 percent percent of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases in the U.S., making it the leading cause of these wrongful convictions. At least 40 percent of these eyewitness identifications involved a cross racial identification (race data is currently only available on the victim, not for non-victim eyewitnesses). Studies have shown that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own. These suggested reforms are embraced by leading criminal justice organizations and have been adopted in the states of New Jersey and North Carolina, large cities like Minneapolis and Seattle, and many smaller jurisdictions.Read more.

Unvalidated or Improper Forensic Science played a role in approximately 50 percent of wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA testing. While DNA testing was developed through extensive scientific research at top academic centers, many other forensic techniques – such as hair microscopy, bite mark comparisons, firearm tool mark analysis and shoe print comparisons – have never been subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation. Meanwhile, forensics techniques that have been properly validated – such as serology, commonly known as blood typing – are sometimes improperly conducted or inaccurately conveyed in trial testimony. In other wrongful conviction cases, forensic scientists have engaged in misconduct. Read more.

False confessions and incriminating statements lead to wrongful convictions in approximately 25 percent of cases. Looking only at the homicide cases, false confessions are the leading contributor to wrongful convictions, contributing to 64 (62%) of the 104 homicide wrongful convictions that were overturned by DNA evidence, where as misidentifications contributed to only 32 (31%) of the homicide wrongful convictions. Twenty-nine of the DNA exonerees pled guilty to crimes they did not commit. The Innocence Project encourages police departments to electronically record all custodial interrogations in their entirety in order to prevent coercion and to provide an accurate record of the proceedings.

Informants contributed to wrongful convictions in 18 percent of cases. Whenever informant testimony is used, the Innocence Project recommends that the judge instruct the jury that most informant testimony is unreliable as it may be offered in return for deals, special treatment, or the dropping of charges. Prosecutors should also reveal any incentive the informant might receive, and all communication between prosecutors and informants should be recorded. Read more.

Edited April 29, 2014 by Janelle2002

[Janelle2002 3,865]

Could be worse.

Could be Egypt.

Egypt sentences 683 to death in latest mass trial of dissidents

MINYA, Egypt — An Egyptian court in the southern city of Minya sentenced 683 people to death Monday in the most recent of a series of mass trials that have alarmed the international community.

The ruling came one month after 529 people were sentenced to death in a similar mass trial in the same courtroom, and it coincided with a visit to Washington by Egypt’s foreign minister in an effort to smooth relations between the United States and one of its most significant allies in the Middle East.

The Obama administration quickly condemned the ruling, saying that it defied “even the most basic standards of international justice.”

“Egyptian leaders must take a stand against this illogical action and dangerous precedent, recognizing that the repression of peaceful dissent will fuel the instability and radicalization that Egypt says it wishes to prevent,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

Those sentenced to death were all alleged supporters of the ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who was toppled last summer in a military coup. They included Mohammed Badie, the “supreme guide” of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which captured the lion’s share in Egypt’s first democratic elections, held in 2012.

All but 37 of the previous death sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment, under a review by Egypt’s highest religious authority, it was announced Monday.

The most serious charge in Monday’s case was the killing of a single police officer during clashes between security forces and Morsi’s supporters across the nation last summer. The clashes broke out after Egyptian security forces launched deadly raids on pro-Morsi protest camps in the capital.

The defendants were barred from attending their own trial, which lasted only a few minutes, defense attorneys said. It was unclear what evidence the court had used to convict the men, who were described by families and defense attorneys as ordinary townspeople.

Defense attorneys said they would appeal the verdict. But anger was palpable in Minya and the nearby village of Al-Edwa, home to nearly all of the 683.

I saw this. This is insane. There is no way they could have proved beyond a doubt all of these people were directly involved in the case.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

Look at the most recent case:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/08/justice/new-york-wrongful-conviction/

Jonathan Fleming, 51, was found guilty in 1989 in the death of Darryl Rush in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn and served the next 24 years and 8 months in prison, according to the Kings County district attorney's office. He was released Tuesday afternoon.

In the course of the investigation, the Conviction Review Unit found the receipt in police records, time stamped and dated -- solidifying Fleming's claim that he was in Florida at the time of the killing, according to the district attorney's office.

He had a plane tickets, eye witnesses and his own mother who was with him in Disneyworld, and they still locked him up.

[OriZ 3,157]

There is absolutely no need for the death penalty in the 21st century. Actually, before my wife and I decided where we were moving(she is from Wisconsin originally, and once we decided to return to the states, she knew she did not want to go back to wisconsin, other than that any state was fair game) the way for us to narrow it down initially was we weren't going to live in a state that has the death penalty. That narrowed it down by more than half. And then we added dozens of other factors and ended up in VT

[novedsac 355]

Unfortunately, the only people in this country who are executed are poor people. They don't have the resources to prove their innocence.

That assumes they're innocent. The article you referenced also says that the overwhelming majority are not innocent.

However, I believe the death penalty is wrong, not because innocent people die, but because it is simply wrong to kill someone.

[belinda63 3,038]

It is better for 100 guilty men to go free than one innocent man to be locked up.....sorry don't remember who said this.

[Teddy B 17,252]

There is absolutely no need for the death penalty in the 21st century. Actually, before my wife and I decided where we were moving(she is from Wisconsin originally, and once we decided to return to the states, she knew she did not want to go back to wisconsin, other than that any state was fair game) the way for us to narrow it down initially was we weren't going to live in a state that has the death penalty. That narrowed it down by more than half. And then we added dozens of other factors and ended up in VT

How heavily did the quality of Taxi services weigh in your decision to move to Vermont?

[SMR 368]

This is the reason I am against the death penalty. I have no problem executing murderers. It's just that executing them doesn't really help society in a meaningful way and also risks executing the innocent. The cost/benefit analysis of execution is very weak.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

This is the reason I am against the death penalty. I have no problem executing murderers. It's just that executing them doesn't really help society in a meaningful way and also risks executing the innocent. The cost/benefit analysis of execution is very weak.

Exactly! The risks and costs of the death penalty outweigh the benefits. By large margins, actually.