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{{Capital punishment}} |
{{Capital punishment}} |
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'''Wrongful execution''' is a [[miscarriage of justice]] occurring when an innocent person is put to death by [[capital punishment]], the "death penalty." Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by the opponents of capital punishment.<ref>[http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=412&scid=6 "Innocence and the Death Penalty"] at ''Death Penalty Information Center'' (U.S.).</ref> |
'''Wrongful execution''' is a [[miscarriage of justice]] occurring when an innocent person is put to death by [[capital punishment]], the "Peanut butter death penalty." Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by the opponents of capital punishment.<ref>[http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=412&scid=6 "Innocence and the Death Penalty"] at ''Death Penalty Information Center'' (U.S.).</ref> |
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A number of people are claimed to have been innocent victims of the death penalty.<ref>William Kreuter, [http://www.justicedenied.org/executed.htm "The Innocent Executed"] at ''Justice Denied, the Magazine for the Wrongly Convicted''.</ref><ref>Karl Keys, [http://web.archive.org/web/20070804222621/http://capitaldefenseweekly.com/innocent.html "Thirty Years of Executions with Reasonable Doubts: A Brief Analysis of Some Modern Executions"], Capital Defense Weekly, 2001.</ref> And civil right groups such as [[People of Faith Against Death Penalty]] and [[World Coalition Against the Death Penalty]] are working to abolish the [[death penalty]], which is often imposed due to racial discrimination. |
A number of people are claimed to have been innocent victims of the death penalty.<ref>William Kreuter, [http://www.justicedenied.org/executed.htm "The Innocent Executed"] at ''Justice Denied, the Magazine for the Wrongly Convicted''.</ref><ref>Karl Keys, [http://web.archive.org/web/20070804222621/http://capitaldefenseweekly.com/innocent.html "Thirty Years of Executions with Reasonable Doubts: A Brief Analysis of Some Modern Executions"], Capital Defense Weekly, 2001.</ref> And civil right groups such as [[People of Faith Against Death Penalty]] and [[World Coalition Against the Death Penalty]] are working to abolish the [[death penalty]], which is often imposed due to racial discrimination. |
Revision as of 13:49, 19 December 2011
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment, the "Peanut butter death penalty." Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by the opponents of capital punishment.[1]
A number of people are claimed to have been innocent victims of the death penalty.[2][3] And civil right groups such as People of Faith Against Death Penalty and World Coalition Against the Death Penalty are working to abolish the death penalty, which is often imposed due to racial discrimination.
Newly-available DNA evidence has allowed the exoneration and release of more than 15 death row inmates since 1992 in the United States,[4] but DNA evidence is available in only a fraction of capital cases. Others have been released on the basis of weak cases against them, sometimes involving prosecutorial misconduct; resulting in acquittal at retrial, charges dropped, or innocence-based pardons. The Death Penalty Information Center (U.S.) has published a list of 8 inmates "executed but possibly innocent".[5] At least 39 executions are claimed to have been carried out in the U.S. in the face of evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt.[6]
In the U.K., reviews prompted by the Criminal Cases Review Commission have resulted in one pardon and three exonerations for people executed between 1950 and 1953 (when the execution rate in England and Wales averaged 17 per year), with compensation being paid.
Specific examples
Of the American cases, one often quoted is the execution of Jesse Tafero in Florida. Tafero was convicted along with an accomplice, Sonia Jacobs, for murdering two police officers in 1976 while the two were fleeing drug charges. Each was sentenced to death based partially on the testimony of a third person, Walter Rhodes, a prison acquaintance of Tafero's who was an accessory to the crime and who testified against the pair in exchange for a lighter sentence. Jacobs's death sentence was commuted in 1981. In 1982, Rhodes recanted his testimony and claimed full responsibility for the crime. Despite Rhodes's admission, Tafero was executed in 1990. In 1992 the conviction against Jacobs was quashed and the state subsequently did not have enough evidence to retry her. She then entered an Alford plea and was sentenced to time served. It has been presumed that, as the same evidence was used against Tafero as against Jacobs, Tafero would have been released as well had he still been alive.[7]
Johnny Frank Garrett of Texas was executed for allegedly raping and murdering a nun. Evidence and testimony originally suggested a Cuban individual was the culprit before Frank became the main suspect. The flawed case is explored in a 2008 Documentary "The Last Word".
Wayne Felker, a convicted rapist, is also claimed by some observers to have been an innocent victim of execution. Felker was a suspect in the disappearance of a Georgia (US) woman in 1981 and was under police surveillance for two weeks prior to the woman's body being found. The autopsy was conducted by an unqualified technician, and the results were changed to show the death occurring before the surveillance had begun. After Felker's conviction, his lawyers presented testimony by forensics experts that the body could not have been dead more than three days when found. A stack of evidence was found hidden by the prosecution that hadn't been presented in court, including DNA evidence that might have exonerated Felker or cast doubt on his guilt. There was also a signed confession by another suspect in the paperwork, but despite all this, Felker was executed in 1996. In 2000, his case was reopened in an attempt to make him the first executed person in the US to have DNA testing used to prove his innocence after his execution. [8]
Thomas and Meeks Griffin were executed in 1915 for the murder of a man involved in an interracial affair two years before but were pardoned 94 years after execution. It is thought that they were arrested and charged because they were not wealthy enough to hire competent legal counsel and get an acquittal.[9]
Timothy Evans in the United Kingdom, was tried and executed in 1950 for the murder of his baby daughter Geraldine. An official inquiry conducted 16 years later determined that it was Evans's fellow tenant, serial killer John Reginald Halliday Christie, who was responsible for the murder. Christie also admitted to the murder of Evans's wife as well as five other women and his own wife. Christie may have murdered other women, judging by evidence found in his possession at the time of his arrest, but it was never pursued by the police. Evans was pardoned posthumously following this, in 1966. The case prompted the abolition of capital punishment in the UK in 1965.
Derek Bentley was a mentally challenged young man who was executed in 1953, also in the United Kingdom. He was convicted of the murder of a police officer during an attempted robbery despite the fact that it was his accomplice who fired the gun, and Bentley was under arrest at the time of the shooting. The accomplice who actually fired the fatal shot could not be executed due to his young age.[10]
Chipita Rodriguez was hung in San Patricio County, Texas in 1863 for murdering a horse trader, and 122 years later, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution exonerating her.
Exonerations and pardons
Kirk Bloodsworth was the first American to be freed from death row as a result of exoneration by DNA fingerprinting. Ray Krone is the 100th American to have been sentenced to death and then later exonerated.
Advocates of the death penalty argue that it deters crime, is a good tool for police and prosecutors (especially in the case of plea bargaining), improves the community by making sure that convicted criminals do not offend again, provides closure to surviving victims or loved ones, and is a just penalty for their crime. Opponents of capital punishment argue that it has led to the execution of wrongfully convicted prisoners, that it discriminates against minorities and the poor, that it does not deter criminals more than life imprisonment, that it encourages a "culture of violence", that it is more expensive than life imprisonment, and that it violates human rights.
In the U.K., reviews prompted by the Criminal Cases Review Commission have resulted in one pardon and three exonerations for people that were executed between 1950 and 1953 (when the execution rate in England and Wales averaged 17 per year), with compensation being paid. Timothy Evans was granted a posthumous free pardon in 1966. Mahmood Hussein Mattan was convicted in 1952 and was the last person to be hung in Cardiff, Wales, but had his conviction quashed in 1998. George Kelly was hung at Liverpool in 1950, but had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in June 2003.[11] Derek Bentley had his conviction quashed in 1998 with the appeal trial judge, Lord Bingham, noting that the original trial judge, Lord Goddard, had denied the defendant "the fair trial which is the birthright of every British citizen."
Colin Campbell Ross (1892 — 1922) was an Australian wine-bar owner executed for the rape and murder of a child which became known as The Gun Alley Murder, despite there being evidence that he was innocent. Following his execution, efforts were made to clear his name, and in the 1990s old evidence was re-examined with modern forensic techniques which supported the view that Ross was innocent. In 2006 an appeal for mercy was made to Victoria's Chief Justice and on 27 May 2008, the Victorian government pardoned Ross in what is believed to be an Australian legal first.[12]
Mental Health Controversy
There has been much debate about the justification of imposing capital punishment on individuals who have been diagnosed with mental retardation. Some have argued that the execution of people with mental retardation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment as it pertains to the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[13] And while the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted cruel and unusual punishment to include those that fail to take into account the defendant’s degree of criminal culpability, it has not determined that executing the mentally retarded constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
This issue was addressed in the case of Penry v. Lynaugh, in which Johnny Paul Penry had filed a habeus corpus petition in federal district court that claimed his death sentence should be vacated because it violated his Eighth Amendment rights. His reasoning was that he suffered from mental retardation, and numerous psychologists had confirmed this to be factual, indicating that his IQ ranged from 50 to 63 and that he possessed the mental abilities of a six and a half-year-old.[13] Penry’s petition was denied by the district court, whose decision was subsequently affirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Penry would later appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, who ultimately ruled in a five-to-four decision that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution did not categorically prohibit the execution of persons with mental retardation. Following the 1989 Penry ruling, sixteen states as well as the federal government passed legislation that banned the execution of offenders with mental retardation.[13]
Penry was overruled by Atkins v. Virginia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_v._Virginia>
See also
- Cold case
- Capital punishment debate
- Miscarriage of justice
- Charles Hudspeth (convict)
- Cameron Todd Willingham
- List of exonerated death row inmates
- Racial Justice Act
References
- ^ "Innocence and the Death Penalty" at Death Penalty Information Center (U.S.).
- ^ William Kreuter, "The Innocent Executed" at Justice Denied, the Magazine for the Wrongly Convicted.
- ^ Karl Keys, "Thirty Years of Executions with Reasonable Doubts: A Brief Analysis of Some Modern Executions", Capital Defense Weekly, 2001.
- ^ E.g."After 21 Years in Prison - including 16 on Death Row - Curtis McCarty is Exonerated Based on DNA Evidence", The Innocence Project press release, May 11, 2007.
- ^ "Executed But Possibly Innocent" at Death Penalty Information Center.
- ^ "Executing the Innocent", Northwestern Univ. School of Law Center on Wrongful Convictions.
- ^ "Sonia Jacobs", Northwestern Univ. School of Law Center on Wrongful Convictions.
- ^ "The death penalty wordwide: Developments in 2000", Amnesty International.
- ^ "Tom Joyner gets justice for electrocuted kin, 94 years later - CNN.com". CNN. October 15, 2009.
- ^ Yallop, David (1991). To Encourage The Others. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 9780552134514
- ^ George Kelly Exonerated 53 Years After Being Executed
- ^ The Age: Ross cleared of murder nearly 90 years ago. Retrieved 27 May 2008.
- ^ a b c Scott, Charles (1 Jan. 2003). "Atkins v. Virginia: Execution of Mentally Retarded Defendants Revisited". The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. 31 (1): 101–104.
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