In the last 30 years, there has not been a single case where an executed person was later proved innocent.
22 of your 23 "wrongly convicted" individuals were executed a long long long time ago, before the DP was re-established, and the DP process was reformed. The only one of your 23 "innocent" individuals executed in the past 30 years, James Adams, was actually quite guilty. He received a unanimous jury verdict on the murder, and was sentenced to death, 7-5, based largely on the fact that he was a career violent criminal. He'd already served time for rape. There were several credible eyewitnesses who saw him and his car at the scene, the victim's jewelry was in his trunk, and the victim's blood was on his money. (In the interest of fairness, there was one witness who supposedly had a grudge against the defendant who corroborated another witness's testimony. And the victim had hair on him which did not match Adams's. These items did not sway jurors in the weight of the other eyewitness testimony and physical and circumstantial evidence.)
He was guilty. Even if you think there might be a shred of doubt, you can't possibly claim he's innocent. Sorry, but that's just ludricrous. |
