Terrence,
Trial error rates of nearly 70% is pretty abysmal. Makes one wonder about having the death penalty at all. Did you notice that Missouri and Virginia have a much lower error rate than the rest of the States. Low enough that they brought the national average down significantly. Interesting.
From the report:
"The "overall success rate" of capital judgments undergoing judicial inspection, and its converse, the "overall error-rate," are crucial factors in assessing the effectiveness of the capital punishment system. The "overall success rate" is the proportion of capital judgments that underwent, and passed, the three-stage judicial inspection process during the study period. The "overall error rate" is the reverse: the proportion of fully reviewed capital judgments that were overturned at one of the three stages due to serious error. Nationally, over the entire 1973-1995 period, the overall error-rate in our capital punishment system was 68%.
"Serious error" is error that substantially undermines the reliability of the guilt finding or death sentence imposed at trial. Each instance of that error warrants public concern. The most common errors are (1) egregiously incompetent defense lawyering (accounting for 37% of the state post-conviction reversals), and (2) prosecutorial suppression of evidence that the defendant is innocent or does not deserve the death penalty (accounting for another 16%-19%, when all forms of law enforcement misconduct are considered). As is true of other violations, these two count as "serious" and warrant reversal only when there is a reasonable probability that, but for the responsible actor's miscues, the outcome of the trial would have been different.
The seriousness of these errors is also revealed by what happens on retrial, when the errors are cured. In our state post-conviction study, an astonishing 82% (247 out of 301) of the capital judgments that were reversed were replaced on retrial with a sentence less than death, or no sentence at all. In the latter regard, 7% (22/301) of the reversals for serious error resulted in a determination on retrial that the defendant was not guilty of the capital offense."
Reading through much of the detail I found the cases of prosecutorial suppression of evidence quite astonishing [and depressing]. The prosecution seemed to be more interested in "a conviction" rather than convicting a guilty person. For example the case where the prosecution presented the defendant's gun as the murder weapon, but suppressed the ballistic test that showed that the weapon was not used in the crime; or suppressed the evidence that the key prosecution witness, had incriminated himself in the crime in a out of trial hearing. Or how about the court appointed lawyer for the black defendant: 83 years old and an imperial wizard of the KKK for 15 years.
Every time I thought there was an egregious error that couldn't be topped, there was another one.
Makes you also wonder what the error rate is for the system in general, i.e., non-capital punishment cases. After all it is the same set of prosecutors.
Thanks for posting the link.
jttmab |
