Wrongful Convictions

     The biggest problem with the death penalty is the possibility of wrongful convictions.  The world has no "necromancers", nobody can be brought back from death.  In other words the death penalty cannot be undone.  Once someone has been wrongfully convicted and put to death, that cannot be compensated.  It is surprisingly common for people on death row to be acquitted or have their charges dismissed.  Since 1976, 82 inmates have been released from death row in the U.S., coming to 1 released for every 7 executed.



This is a chart of the spread of wrongful convictions cases in CA.  42% of them are for Murder related trials, showing that cases involving major crimes are more likely to have a wrong decision.

   The wrongful convictions also sometimes deal with racism and prejudice.  Studies have shown that a black man and a Caucasian man on trial for the same thing have very different likelihoods of conviction.  About 50% of men sentenced to death are black, where only 20% are white.  Especially in states where racism still defines everyday life, this is a huge problem because juries and judges, as much as we wish they were impartial, do have their biases.  University of Iowa professor David Baldus published a study examining more than 2,000 homicides that took place in Georgia beginning in 1972. They found that black defendants were 1.7 times more likely to receive the death penalty than white defendants and that murderers of white victims were 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed blacks.  Baldus also discovered that although blacks and whites are victims of homicide in relatively equal numbers nationwide in the United States, roughly 80% of people receiving the death penalty had killed white victims.  In Texas, out of 470 executions since the death penalty was reinstated, only one involved the murder of a black man by a white man.  Similar to this issue is the issue of mental instability or disability, which is often used successfully as a defense.  In murder trials decisions are often taken too quickly for proper analysis of the accused's mental state, meaning that people who murdered due to an unstable mental condition are executed.  

     On February 17 2004, American Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas on the legal grounds of having murdered his three children with arson.  5 years later, in 2009 the case was revisited, and courts found that there was no reason to be suspicious of arson, based on their thoughts, and the input of professional fire-investigators.  Had Cameron been in jail, on a life sentence, this would have provided the basis for a new trial and the acquittal of the accused, however Cameron was not in jail he was dead and this cannot be undone.