How Many Wrongly Convicted Have Been Executed Since 1977?
In my article 13 Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty I wrote: "For every 7 executions–486 since 1976–1 other prisoner on death row has been found innocent." In response, a reader from Dallas, Texas (where else?) calling himself EasTex tried to justify the barbarity of his state's executions by asserting, "And yet since the DP has been reinstated not one person who has been executed has been found later to be innocent."
Reader EasTex is obviously ignorant of the fact that there is no judicial process in the United States to have a hearing after a person is executed - the person is dead and one cannot give a dead person a new trial to overturn his false conviction.
In fact, once a wrongfully convicted person is executed the state is loath to admit that it killed an innocent man and will do everything it can to legally destroy any exculpatory evidence, even DNA, to prevent the bad publicity that would ensue; as happened in the case of Joseph Roger O'Dell III: Fearing that he might have been innocent, the prosecutor convinced the court that it would be devastating if the DNA proved that "Virginia executed an innocent man." And so the court quickly ordered that the evidence be destroyed. See my article Has Anyone Ever Been Found Innocent After Being Executed for Murder?.
Although it is patently obvious, it needs to be stated for die-hard death penalty advocates that the actual number of wrongful convictions is greatly under-reported by the simple fact that once an innocent man is executed the effort and monies needed to keep the case open dwindles tremendously and so it is highly unlikely that the truth will ever be exposed.
In the coming weeks I will post a detailed article for each of the following poor souls who were wrongfully executed and for whom compelling evidence of their innocence was only discovered afterwards. In fact, in some cases DNA proved the innocence of the condemned but the governors or courts were unwilling to stay the execution
| Name | State | Convicted | Executed | Article |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carlos DeLuna | Texas | 1983 | 1989 | Link |
| Jesse Tafero | Florida | 1976 | 1990 | |
| Lionel Herrera | Texas | 1982 | 1993 | |
| Ruben Cantu | Texas | 1985 | 1993 | |
| Larry Griffin | Missouri | 1981 | 1995 | |
| Ellis Wayne Felker | Georgia | 1981 | 1996 | |
| Joseph O'Dell | Virginia | 1986 | 1997 | |
| Leo Jones | Florida | 1981 | 1998 | |
| Gary Graham | Texas | 1981 | 2000 | |
| Claude Jones | Texas | 1989 | 2000 | |
| Cameron Willingham | Texas | 1992 | 2004 | Link |
| Troy Davis | Georgia | 1991 | 2011 | Link |
There are dozens more, but I don't want this article to become too tedious, but I will post articles on others as well.
So when you hear denials that no one post-execution was ever legally found innocent, be aware that that is a judicial impossibility. Dead men have no standing to ask to have their convictions overturned. Yes, there are cases where Governors have posthumously pardoned the wrongly executed; for example we reported a while back that Nebraska Governor Bob Kerrey in 1987 posthumously granted William Jackson Marion a full pardon based on innocence - but that is not a judicial process.
No one can deny the fact that in the US over the past 40 years there were over 143 individuals who were convicted and sentenced to death and who subsequently had their convictions reversed, and luckily avoided execution - this number is not my opinion, their innocence is not subjective - it is the result of actions by the decisions of courts and prosecutor offices and reported in the media.
But here is the interesting thing about the mind of death penalty proponents. While they cannot deny that dozens of dozens of innocent people on death row were in fact exonerated (it's in all the news media after all), they will somehow stick to their belief that not one innocent person could ever have been executed.
Think about it. If a hundred death row convicts were found to be innocent before execution, then our system somehow, miraculously, is able to execute hundreds from the same pool of inmates without once inadvertently killing an innocent party. American Justice in this case is not Blind at all but able to look into the hearts of man and know who to send to death and who to make wait on death row until they are exonerated. Amazing. Actually, amazing that any person of intelligence could so twist logic and reason so they can sleep at night.
No innocent people in America are ever executed? Give me a break.
