May, 1994 Essay *1835 COUNSEL FOR THE POOR: THE DEATH SENTENCE NOT FOR THE WORST CRIME BUT FOR THE WORST LAWYER Stephen B. Bright [FNd] Copyright © 1994 by the Yale Law Journal Company, Inc.; Stephen B. Bright
Here are 10 people who were sentenced to death, but are widely believed to be innocent. In 1983, Carlos DeLuna was convicted of murdering a convenience store clerk named Wanda Lopez. Throughout his trial, he maintained that he was innocent, and even suggested another man, named Carlos Hernandez had actually committed the crime.
Another case in which the attorney did nothing was that of Billy Mitchell, executed by Georgia on September 1, 1987. Following a guilty plea, Mitchell was sentenced to death at a sentencing hearing at which defense counsel called no witnesses, presented no mitigating evidence, and made no inquiries into his client's.
In these examples, imposition of the death penalty was not so much the result of the heinousness of the crime or the incorrigibility of the defendant-the factors upon which imposition of capital punishment supposedly is to turn-but rather of how bad the lawyers were. In consequence, a large part of the death row population.
On June 23, 2000, Gary Graham was executed in Texas, despite claims that he was innocent. Graham was 17 when he was charged with the 1981 robbery and shooting of Bobby Lambert outside a Houston supermarket.
The capital offenses include espionage, treason, and death resulting from aircraft hijacking. However, they mostly consist of various forms of murder such as murder committed during a drug-related drive-by shooting, murder during a kidnapping, murder for hire, and genocide.
Reed was scheduled to be executed on November 20, 2019, but doubt over Reed's guilt led to bipartisan support for a stay of his execution from Texas state legislators, as well as numerous celebrities and other public figures....Rodney ReedPenaltyDeathDetailsDateApril 23, 1996Location(s)Bastrop, Texas11 more rows
About 90 percent of all people facing capital charges cannot afford their own attorney. No state, including Ohio, has met standards developed by the American Bar Association (ABA) for appointment, performance and compensation of counsel for indigent prisoners.
Database of convicted people said to be innocent includes 150 allegedly wrongfully executed.
The death penalty can only be imposed on defendants convicted of capital offenses – such as murder, treason, genocide, or the killing or kidnapping of a Congressman, the President, or a Supreme Court justice. Unlike other punishments, a jury must decide whether to impose the death penalty.
Melissa Lucio stands in the visitation area of the Mountain View Unit federal prison in Gatesville.
Howell's family maintains that Jones is guilty. Jones was scheduled to be executed on November 18, 2021....Julius Jones (prisoner)Julius JonesCriminal statusIncarceratedConviction(s)First-degree murderCriminal penaltyDeath (2002; commuted) Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (2021)Details10 more rows
On April 23, 1996, Stites' body was found by the side of a rural Bastrop County road, partially unclothed, hours after she missed her shift at a local grocery store, according to court records. Fennell's truck was found abandoned in a nearby school parking lot.
There is no federal constitutional right to counsel for prisoners on death row.
In 2020, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and 28 states held 2,469 prisoners under sentence of death, and executed 17 (0.7%) of them.
The FBI has found the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates. Innocent people are too often sentenced to death. Since 1973, over 156 people have been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. Nationally, at least one person is exonerated for every 10 that are executed.
The federal offenses for which the death penalty is currently authorized generally require as a necessary element the killing of a victim, but they include a few non-homicidal offenses, such as treason and espionage.
100) further reduced the number of civilian capital crimes to five: murder, treason, espionage, arson in royal dockyards, and piracy with violence; there were other offences under military law. The death penalty remained mandatory for treason and murder unless commuted by the monarch.
All of the prisoners currently on death row and all of those executed in the modern era of the death penalty were convicted of murder. Historically, the death penalty was widely used for rape, particularly against black defendants with white victims.
Penalty: Under U.S. Code Title 18, the penalty is death, or not less than five years' imprisonment (with a minimum fine of $10,000, if not sentenced to death). Any person convicted of treason against the United States also forfeits the right to hold public office in the United States.
Sentenced to death, but innocent: These are stories of justice gone wrong.
Hannah Ocuish, 12, a Native American girl, was hanged in New London, Connecticut, in 1786 for murder . Two enslaved boys—a 12-year-old convicted of murder and a 13-year-old convicted of arson—were hanged in Virginia in 1787 and 1796, respectively.
Ajamu was released on parole in 2003 after 27 years in prison, but the state of Ohio would not declare him innocent of the murder for nearly another 12 years, when the boy’s false statement and police misconduct were revealed in a related court hearing.
DERRICK JAMISON, Sentenced in Hamilton County, OH; 20 years* in prison, all on death row; exonerated in 2005. Derrick Jamison was arrested for the 1984 robbery and murder of a Cincinnati bartender. He was convicted based on false testimony from one of the real perpetrators of t...Read More
Upon learning this, defense lawyers asked for a mistrial, which the judge denied. After Padgett was found guilty, the same judge sentenced him to death.
His conviction was overturned, and all charges were dismissed in 2005. Jamison, now 60, educates others about the flaws of the U.S. justice system and encourages changes to it. Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Ajamu, then named Ronnie Bridgeman, was found guilty primarily because of the testimony of a 13-year-old boy, who said he saw Bridgeman and another young male violently attack the salesman on a city street corner. Not a shred of evidence, forensic or physical, connected Bridgeman to the slaying.
6 Kirk Bloodsworth. via: www.steckphotography.com. Kirk Bloodsworth was the first American ever to have his death sentence overturned by DNA evidence. He was convicted of the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl in 1985, and spent 9 years in prison.
The death penalty is reserved for certain kinds of people. The ones that murder innocent people, and who probably planned it out before they did it. They had plenty of chances to change their minds, b. The death penalty is reserved for certain kinds of people. The ones that murder innocent people, and who probably planned it out before they did it.
The building caught fire, and Richey escaped, leaving Cynthia to die of smoke inhalation. The fire was ruled an arson, and Richey was convicted of murder, and sentenced to death. After numerous appeals, and a scheduled retrial, Richey ended up taking a plea bargain where he plead no contest to attempted involuntary manslaughter, and was sentenced to time served (21 years). The scientific evidence that was presented at his trial to prove he started the fire was highly disputed, and ended up being the main reason his conviction was overturned.
Because of his prior conviction for the carjacking, Thompson was unable to testify on his own behalf during the murder trial. Only 30 days before Thompson's execution date, a private investigator hired by the defense discovered a report on blood taken from the carjacking crime scene.
There were many reasons why 17-year-old, Johnny Garrett should not have been executed for the rape and murder of 76-year-old nun, Tadea Benz in 1981. He was a minor at the time of the crime, and a psychiatrist who evaluated him concluded that he had multiple personalities.
Glen Chapman was sentenced to death in 1992 for the murders of two women. He spent 15 years on death row, and always maintained his innocence. In 2007, a new trial was ordered due to withheld evidence, “lost, misplaced or destroyed” documents, the use of weak, circumstantial evidence, false testimony by the lead investigator, and ineffective assistance of defense counsel during Chapman's original trial. There was also evidence that one of the victims may have died of a drug overdose, and was not murdered. Chapman was set free in 2008, after the court determined the lead investigator on the case had covered up evidence, and perjured himself on the stand, and one of Chapman's attorneys had been drinking heavily throughout the trial.
In 1983, Carlos DeLuna was convicted of murdering a convenience store clerk named Wanda Lopez. Throughout his trial, he maintained that he was innocent, and even suggested another man, named Carlos Hernandez had actually committed the crime. No one, including the police, or DeLuna's own lawyers believed that Hernandez existed, and De Luna was sentenced to death. He was executed in 1989 by lethal injection at the age of 27. It wasn't until 2006, that the Chicago Tribune and a team from Columbia Law School started looking into the case, and found, without much trouble, the existence of Carlos Hernandez, a career criminal who had stabbed two other women with the same kind of weapon used to kill Wanda Lopez. After all the new evidence came to light, even Wanda's brother, Richard, has admitted he believes it was Hernandez, and not DeLuna, who killed his sister.
During the summer of 1975 the body of a 15-year-old Kathy Long in Cherry Tree, Pennsylvania, she had abused and shot in the head. Lewis Fogle was arrested in 1981 for the homicide. The prosecution’s case had no physical evidence, but rather, was based on alleged jailhouse confessions made by Fogle. 4 men were arrested for the murder, including his brother, but only Fogle was brought to trial. He was convicted based on the testimony of 3 inmates who say they heard Fogle confess to the abuse and murder, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. After serving years in prison Fogle contacted the Innocence Project where his conviction would later be overturned. After spending 34 years in prison Fogle was released.
Dewey Bozella, another African-American youth, was wrongfully convicted of the murder of 92-year-old Emma Crasper in 1977. Her Poughkeepsie, New York apartment was coated in blood splatter after the brutal attack. Police alleged that a then teenage Bozella, killed the elderly woman when she walked in on him committing a home invasion style burglary. There was never any evidence that substantiated exactly why police targeted Bozella. Bozella never confessed to his guilt, and was denied parole by a parole board 4 separate times while serving his 20 years to life prison sentence. However, after years in prison Bozella contacted the innocence project, upon looking into his case they found that the prosecution did not turn over exculpatory evidence that would have proved Bozella’s innocence. He was exonerated and let free after serving 26 years in prison.
The series of these brutal attacks triggered a statewide fear. He was arrested in connection to the crimes because a victim, identified Richard Alexander as the perpetrator. However, following his arrest in 1996 the violent attacks continued. However, they were not regarded as River Park cases, due to Alexander’s imprisonment. In one instance, the victim identified Alexander as the perpetrator in her case, even though he was already in prison in connection with the River Park case. It was later found that his photo had been accidentally slipped into the photo lineup for the victim. However, in 2001 after comparing the DNA from the crime scene to the mitochondrial DNA of Alexander, it was not a match. Alexander was later exonerated. Following his exoneration a man named Michael Murphy confessed to one of the attacks providing details that only could have been known had he been present.
They were identified as Rhonda Renee Johnson and Sharon Lynn Shaw. Michael Lloyd Self was indicted and convicted of the double homicide. However, suspicion of the validity of the conviction would arise in in 1998 when serial killer Edward Howard Bell would confess to the double homicide. It had also been discovered that Self was coerced into a false confession. At one point during Self’s alleged conviction he claims he dumped the bodies in a town called El Largo, over 20 miles from where the bodies were discovered. For the final time in 1993 Self had appealed for a new trial, it was denied and his appeals were exhausted. Following the denial of a new trial, Self died of cancer in 2000, he died in prison.
When the criminal justice system accuses or convicts a person of a crime they did not commit, it is a horrible miscarriage of justice. These famous wrongful conviction cases are horrific and cause an innocent person and their loved ones immense harm, psychologically, financially, and physically. Most importantly, they may strip the innocent ...
If you or someone you know faces a situation of the justice system wrongfully accusing or convicting them of a crime, seek legal representation immediately.
The Central Park 5. The Central Park jogger case, also known as the Central Park Five case, resulted in the wrongful convictions of five young men of color from underprivileged backgrounds. Their alleged crime was attacking and sexually assaulting a white woman who was jogging in New York City’s Central Park.
Failed to find the true killer of a child at the time; and. Took three decades of life away from two very young men. In 2014, after nearly 31 years in prison, the court exonerated the two brothers based on DNA evidence.
Like the Central Park 5, the Duke students were all teens or young men. The media coverage of the case was massive, and the public early on turned against the Duke athletes. But the similarities between the cases ends there.
In 2003, Kimberly arrived home and discovered her boyfriend bludgeoned to death in the living room of the home they shared. She immediately called 911. Then, the police charged her with the crime. She pleaded that the police were wrongfully accusing her.
The police did not believe her. They had a witness putting her at the scene, they said, and the case went to a California court. The first jury hung, and nine jurors were in favor of acquittal. The second jury, after allowed a break from deliberations to celebrate Christmas, returned a guilty verdict.
The play “Chicago” premiered in 1926 and was based on the unrelated stories of Gaertner and Beulah Annan , another woman acquitted of murder in the Windy City in 1924. The playwright, Maurine Watkins, covered both cases as a reporter for The Chicago Tribune. 3. The photographer who got away with murder.
The defense, meanwhile, poked holes in the prosecution’s case and questioned why Delmont had not been called to testify. Arbuckle’s first two trials ended with hung juries while his third concluded in April 1922 with an acquittal, along with a statement of apology from the jurors that read, in part: “We feel that a great injustice has been done to [Arbuckle]…for there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime.”
Sheppard spent a decade behind bars before a federal court ordered him released on the grounds he’d been denied his constitutional right to a fair trial; the court cited a variety of reasons, including the trial judge’s failure to disqualify himself after making biased comments about the case. In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Sheppard’s conviction, faulting the trial judge for not sequestering the jurors and ruling that “massive, pervasive and prejudicial publicity” had prevented Sheppard from getting a fair trial. Later that year, Sheppard was retried and acquitted. Afterward, he briefly returned to practicing medicine and then, to the surprise of a number of people, embarked on a professional wrestling career; he died from liver disease at age 46. No one else ever was charged with Marilyn Sheppard’s murder, although there has been speculation the Sheppards’ window washer might’ve committed the crime. The TV series “The Fugitive,” which first aired in the 1960s and later became a movie, is often said to have been inspired by Sheppard’s case; however, the program’s creator denied being influenced by it.
In the early hours of July 4, 1954, Sam Sheppard’s pregnant wife, Marilyn, was bludgeoned to death in her bed at the couple’s Bay Village, Ohio, home. Sheppard, a doctor, claimed he’d been sleeping on a living room couch when he heard his wife’s cries, ran upstairs toward her bedroom and was struck from behind and knocked unconscious. When he regained consciousness, he saw an intruder downstairs and chased him outside; they struggled and Sheppard was knocked out again. The Sheppard’s young son slept through the entire incident. Amidst a media frenzy, Sheppard was arrested and put on trial, during which the prosecution argued the doctor had been motivated to kill his wife so he could run off with a woman with whom he was having an affair. In December 1954, Sheppard was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
In 1966 , the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Sheppard’s conviction, faulting the trial judge for not sequestering the jurors and ruling that “massive, pervasive and prejudicial publicity” had prevented Sheppard from getting a fair trial. Later that year, Sheppard was retried and acquitted.
1. The millionaire who gunned down the high-society architect. pinterest-pin-it. Harry Thaw in 1905. (Credit: Hulton Archives/Getty Images) On the night of June 25, 1906, Harry K. Thaw, the son of a railroad and coal magnate, shot and killed famed architect Stanford White during a show at the rooftop theater of New York City’s Madison Square ...
On March 12, 1924, Belva Gaertner was arrested in Chicago for the murder of auto salesman Walter Law, who had been found shot to death in Gaertner’s car, a bullet in his head from her gun, which was in the vehicle. Police discovered Gaertner at her nearby apartment, her clothing bloody.
1. Gerry Conlon. Gerry Conlon is one of the most famous wrongfully-convicted men in the world, having been part of the Guilford Four and Maguire Seven who were falsely imprisoned for an Irish Republican Army bombing in England in 1974. At the time, Conlon was twenty years old.
2. Dr. Sam Sheppard. Stop us if you’ve heard this before: a successful doctor is accused of and convicted for the murder of his wife—despite the doctor repeatedly proclaiming his innocence and telling police about a struggle with a man in his house on the night of the murder. He is later cleared of the murder.
Basically, because Jewell had done his job, he became the prime suspect in the bombing—and he was quickly villainized. He was cleared of any charges in October of that same year—but that was well after he had been found guilty in the court of public opinion.
Along with Conlon, his father Giuseppe and six others, who became known as the Maguire Seven, were arrested and imprisoned when shoddy evidence pointed to them seemingly having handled the explosives. Ultimately, the Guilford Four and Maguire Seven were exonerated once new evidence came to light that the police had fabricated evidence and coerced the confessions. The story of Gerry Conlon was later turned into the movie In the Name of the Father.
Anyone who has been wrongfully accused of doing something they know they did not do will understand the immense frustration that comes with it. Fortunately for most people, that boils down to someone saying they took the last donut or let slip a bit of gas. Unfortunately for others, it involves horrible crimes that lead to hard time in prison.
Thomas has been out of prison for more than thirty years, but his family is still seeking justice in the form of charges against the police responsible. Of course at this point that’s not really possible, as the two men who fabricated the evidence are both dead. 8. Richard Jewell.
Thomas was actually convicted twice for the same crime, having lost an appeal along the way. There was finally a royal commission which uncovered the suspicious actions of the police throughout the investigation, which Thomas says includes using things he told them against him. Thomas has been out of prison for more than thirty years, but his family is still seeking justice in the form of charges against the police responsible. Of course at this point that’s not really possible, as the two men who fabricated the evidence are both dead.
Carlos DeLuna — In 1989, DeLuna was executed for the stabbing of a Texas convenience store clerk. Almost 20 years later, Chicago Tribune uncovered evidence that shows DeLuna was likely innocent. The evidence showed that Carlos Hernandez, a man who even confessed to the murder many times, actually did the crime. 5.
3. Larry Griffin — Griffin was put to death in 1995 for the 1981 murder of Quintin Moss, a Missouri drug dealer. Griffin always maintained his innocence, and now, evidence seems to indicate he was telling the truth.
Innocent people are convicted of crimes they didn’t commit more often than anyone would like to admit, and in some cases, people who were later found to be innocent have actually been put to death. Here are 8 people who were executed and innocent. 1.
The reason they were convicted is because Monk Stevenson, another black man suspected of committing the murder, pointed to the brothers as having been responsible.
Jesse Tafero — In 1976, Tafero was convicted of murdering a state trooper. He and Sonia Jacobs were both sentenced to death for the crime. The main evidence used to convict them was testimony by someone else who was involved in the crime, ex-convict Walter Rhodes.
Ruben Cantu — Cantu was 17 at the time the crime he was alleged of committing took place. Cantu was convicted of capital murder, and in 1993, the Texas teen was executed. About 12 years after his death, investigations show that Cantu likely didn’t commit the murder.
He was supposedly hired by a convenience store clerk to kill someone else, but he allegedly killed the wrong people by mistake. The supervising police lieutenant said “I do not think David Spence committed this crime.”. The lead homicide detective agreed, saying “My opinion is that David Spence was innocent.
The Philando Castile case is one of the most famous police brutality cases to come up since Rodney King’s assault in 1992. So what happened?
Walter Scott Case. The Walter Scott case involves both the issue of planted evidence and police brutality. Attorneys involved in this case had to be both experts on police brutality, civil rights issues, and planted evidence in order to get a conviction.
Once the man realized his money was stolen, he reported it to the police department. Maldonado and four others tried to bribe the man to drop the charges and withdraw the complaint. This is considered witness tampering and is a serious example of police misconduct.
Now former police officer Anthony Maldonado pulled over a vehicle in a routine traffic stop. During this stop, Maldonado noticed a large amount of cash in the car, so he stole it. This in itself is an act of police intimidation referred to as theft under the law. That’s not where the misconduct ends, though.
Witness tampering is a type of misconduct where police officers attempt to change or alter witness testimony by bribes, threats, or other coercive measures. An example case of this occurred recently in Maui, Hawai’i.
His girlfriend, and police body footage, corroborate this story. However, Yanez does not listen and fires 7 shots into the car, killing Castile. This is considered excessive use of force, especially considering that there was an unarmed person and child in the car when Yanez fired 7 shots at close range.
The Eric Garner case is another example of police brutality as a form of police misconduct. He was allegedly selling illegal cigarettes on the street of Staten Island. He wasn’t threatening or being violent towards the officers. The officers attempted to make an arrest and wrestled Garner to the ground.