Not trying to be cute, just acknowledging that there's a lot out there on this topic. This is somewhat interesting...
prodeathpenalty.com
Great effort has been made in pretrial, trial, appeals, writ and clemency procedures to minimize the chance of an innocent being convicted, sentenced to death or executed. Since 1973, legal protections have been so extraordinary that 37% of all death row cases have been overturned for due process reasons or commuted. Indeed, inmates are six times more likely to get off death row by appeals than by execution. (“Capital Punishment 1995", BJS, 1996). And, in fact, many of those cases were overturned based on post conviction new laws, established by legislative or judicial decisions in other cases.
Opponents claim that 69 "innocent" death row inmates have been released since 1973. ("Innocence and the Death Penalty", Death Penalty Information Center, July, 1997). Just a casual review, using the DPIC’s own case descriptions, reveals that of 39 cases reviewed (Sec. A, B, & C, pg. 12-21), that the DPIC offers no evidence of innocence in 29, or 78%, of those cases. Incredibly, the DPIC reviews "Recent Cases of Possible Mistaken Executions" (p 23-24), wherein they list the cases of Roger Keith Coleman, Leonel Herrera, and Jesse Jacobs - 3 cases which helped solidify the anti-death penalty movements penchant for lack of full disclosure and/or fraud. For the fourth case, therein, that of Coleman Wayne Gray, the DPIC makes no effort to claim innocence.
Furthermore, the DPIC and most opponents fail to review that the role of clemency and appeals in such cases is to judge the merits of death row inmates claims regarding innocence and/or additional trial error. Indeed, the release of those 69 inmates proves that such procedures worked precisely, and often generously, as intended. Also contrary to opponents claims, clemency is used generously to grant mercy to death row murderers and to spare inmates whose guilt has come into question. In fact, 135 death row inmates have been spared by clemency or commutation from 1973-95 (ibid.). This represents 43% of the total of those executed during that time - a remarkable record of consideration and mercy.
In reviewing the DPIC’s original 1993 study, finding 48 (of the 69) "innocent" defendants on death row, the DPIC states its debt for the " . . . ground breaking work done by . . . Professors Michael Radelet and Hugo Bedau"(p 1) in their "Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases". See below.
The most significant study conducted to evaluate the evidence of the "innocent executed" is the Bedau-Radelet Study ("Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases," 40, 1 Stanford Law Review, 11/87). The study concluded that 23 innocent persons had been executed since 1900. However, the study's methodology was so flawed that at least 12 of those cases had no evidence of innocence and substantial evidence of guilt. Bedau & Radelet, both opponents, "consistently presented incomplete and misleading accounts of the evidence." (Markman, Stephen J. & Cassell, Paul G., "Protecting the Innocent: A Response to the Bedau-Radelet Study" 41, 1 Stanford Law Review, 11/88). The remaining 11 cases represent 0.14% of the 7,800 executions which have taken place since 1900. And, there is, in fact, no proof that those 11 executed were innocent. In addition, the "innocents executed" group was extracted from a Bedau & Radelet imagined pool of 350 persons who were, supposedly, wrongly convicted of capital or "potentially" capital crimes. Not only were they at least 50% in error with their 23 "innocents executed" claim, but 211 of those 350 cases, or 60%, were not sentenced to death. Bedau and Radelet already knew that plea bargains, the juries, the evidence, the prosecutors, judicial review and/or the legal statutes had put these crimes in the "no capital punishment" category. Indeed, their claims of innocence, regarding the remaining 139 of those 350 cases, should be suspect, given this study’s poor level of accuracy. Calling their work misleading hardly does this "academic" study justice. Had a high school student presented such a report, where 50-60% of the material was either false or misleading, a grade of F would be a likely result.
Indeed, Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Markman finds that " . . . the Bedau-Radelet study is remarkable not (as retired Supreme Court Judge Harry Blackmun seems to believe) for demonstrating that mistakes involving the death penalty are common, but rather for demonstrating how uncommon they are . . . This study - the most thorough and painstaking analysis ever on the subject - fails to prove that a single such mistake has occurred in the United States during the twentieth century." Presumably, Bedau and Radelet would have selected the most compelling 23 cases of the innocent executed to prove their proposition. "Yet, in each of these cases, where there is a record to review, there are eyewitnesses, confessions, physical evidence and circumstantial evidence in support of the defendant’s guilt. Bedau has written elsewhere that it is ‘false sentimentality to argue that the death penalty ought to be abolished because of the abstract possibility that an innocent person might be executed when the record fails to disclose that such cases exist.’ . . . (T)he Bedau and Radelet study . . . speaks eloquently about the extraordinary rarity of error in capital punishment." ("Innocents on Death Row?", National Review, September 12, 1994).
Another significant oversight by that study was not differentiating between the risk of executing innocent persons before and after Furman v Georgia (1972). There is, in fact, no proof that an innocent has been executed since 1900. And the probability of such a tragedy occurring has been lowered significantly more since Furman. In the context that hundreds of thousands of innocents have been murdered or seriously injured, since 1900, by criminals improperly released by the U.S. criminal justice system (or not incarcerated at all!), the relevant question is: Is the risk of executing the innocent, however slight, worth the justifications for the death penalty - those being retribution, rehabilitation, incapacitation, required punishment, deterrence, escalating punishments, religious mandates, cost savings, the moral imperative, just punishment and the saving of innocent lives?
Predictably, opponents still continue to fraudulently claim, even today*, that this study has proven that 23 "innocent" people have been executed, even though Bedau and Radelet, the authors of that study, conceded - in 1988 - that neither they nor any previous researchers have proved that any of those executed was innocent: "We agree with our critics that we have not proved these executed defendants to be innocent; we never claimed that we had." (41, 1 Stanford Law Review, 11/1988).
One of opponents most blatant frauds is their claim that the U.S. Supreme Court, in Herrera v. Collins (113 S. Ct. 853, 870{1993}), found that the Herrera "decision would allow the states to execute a defendant for a crime that he did not commit. Justice O’Connor’s concurring opinion makes clear that Herrera does not stand for that proposition. Justice O’Connor stated, ‘I cannot disagree with the fundamental legal principal that executing the innocent is inconsistent with the Constitution’ and ‘the execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event.’ As Justice O’Connor stated, the Court assumed for the sake of argument ‘that a truly persuasive demonstration of actual innocence would render any such execution unconstitutional and that federal habeas relief would be warranted if no state avenue were open to process the claim.’ Id., at 874. That is the holding in Herrera, and any claim to the contrary is simply not correct."
"Moreover, Herrera’s claim of innocence was weak at best, seeking to blame his dead brother for the crimes Herrera was found guilty of committing. When the evidence against Herrera is considered against the proffered evidence of innocence, it is not surprising that none of the federal judges to hear this claim, including the dissenters in the Supreme Court, have ever expressed any doubt as to Herrera’s guilt." Kenneth S. Nunnelley in Congressional testimony, July 23, 1993
*Example: Stephen Bright, Director, Southern Center For Human Rights (Atlanta, Ga.). claims that Aubrey Adams of Florida represents a case of the “innocent” executed. (Cochran & Grace, Court TV, 3/ 25/97). Since neither JFA nor the Death Penalty Information Center could locate an Aubrey Adams for which such claims had been made, JFA assumes that Mr. Bright meant the well known case of James Adams of Florida.
The James Adams case is particularly worthy of review. Not only is the Adams case one of those alleged 23 "innocent" executed, but his is the only post-Furman case cited by Bedau and Radelet. Bedau and Radelet’s claims and "evidence" are too lengthy to review here. A short review is all that is required to discredit such claims. They "proved" Adams’ innocence by a review, not of the case facts, but of Adams’ own claims from his clemency hearing! This dishonest review was presented as an objective evaluation of the case when, in fact, it was completely biased, with only one goal - to present the case facts in the light most favorable to Adams and to neglect or suppress the voluminous evidence of Adams’ guilt. Cassell and Markman exposed this academic fraud and presented the case facts from the full record, as Bedau and Radelet should have. The case for Adams’ guilt is solid. Mr. Bright is a leading spokesperson in the anti-death penalty movement
Both Bedau and Radelet refused to claim that Adams was innocent. Yet, this does not prevent opponents from making false claims to the contrary. If Mr. Bright was discussing the James Adams case, this is a classic, standard example of the type of anti-death penalty fraud found every day.
Irresponsible editors, publishers and authors are common within this debate. Two examples: Punishment and the Death Penalty, Baird, Robert & Rosenbaum, Stuart, Prometheus, 1996 and Capital Punishment: the death penalty debate, Gottfried, Ted, Enslow, 1997. Both still claim that 23 "innocents" have been executed! |
