Treatment of innocently convicted prisoners

Introduction

Since 1986, when capital punishment was reinstated, eighty-seven men and women have been taken off death row and freed because they were proven innocent. Since the turn of the century, 343 people have been wrongly convicted. Of these, 137 were sentenced to death, twenty-five were actually executed, sixty-one served more than ten years in jail, and seven died while in prison. These figures raise the question: how many innocent people are on death row right now?

Recent studies and new evidence suggest that some death row inmates awaiting execution may have been wrongly convicted. A twenty-three year study conducted by Columbia University Law Professor James S. Liebman states that "American capital sentences are so persistently and systematically fraught with error". In "A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995," Liebman found that the overall rate of prejudicial error in the capital system was 68%.

Currently there are approximately 3,500 inmates on death row in thirty-eight states that have adopted the death penalty. Liebman's figure clearly indicates a possibility of some wrongful convictions in the cases of those still awaiting execution.

Discussion

In order to impose the death sentence on a defendant, guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt. When it comes to matters of life and death, there should be no room for doubt in the minds of judges or juries. Defendants should be proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt in order to justify a death sentence. "In an execution in this country the test ought not to be reasonable doubt; the test ought to be is there any doubt."

State and federal courts have found serious, reversible error in nearly seven of every ten of the thousands of capital punishment cases that have been fully reviewed. Errors can be attributed to a number of factors. First, there has been a steady increase in the use of the death penalty as the sentence in capital cases, with New York and Kansas being the latest states to adopt capital punishment. Law enforcement and prosecutors have caused numerous mistakes as well. Since murder can be considered the most heinous of crimes, there is extreme political and public pressure on police and prosecution to solve murder crimes and close cases. Also, rarely in murder cases is there an eyewitness to the actual killing. The lack of eyewitness testimony has contributed to the error factor. In many cases, the state's star witnesses were jailhouse informants. Others have been granted immunity or less severe punishments for their own crimes in exchange for their testimonies. It is hard to believe how prosecutors can admit evidence from such unreliable sources.

In some cases witnesses have later recanted or disavowed their testimonies claiming that they had only made their statements under pressure or coercion from prosecution and law enforcement. These false testimonies proved to be the condemning evidence in many cases. Lastly, most of the people charged in capital cases cannot afford defense attorneys. The appointed defense counsels in several cases have exhibited ...