March 26th Chapters 9 10 p 213 302 I Miscarriages of Justice and the Death Penalty Austin Sarat writes about a new abolitionism that eschews moralistic arguments against the death penalty as well as those that suggest the penalty is unconstitutional He argues that new abolitionist focus on the damage has done to due process and equal protection Commanding issue is innocence It is important to distinguish innocence from guilt so you are not killing some in irrevocability error requiring Super due process Definitions of Innocence To determine whether any innocent people have been victims of miscarriages to settle on a definition of innocence II A Conservative v Liberal Includes only those cases in which a govt official admitted error But no government official has ever admitted to the execution of an innocent person does not mean that none of happened Only officially exonerated defendants convicted of a capital crime that did Capital defendants whose cases were dismissed or who were found not not occur capital murder guilty at retrial Defendants may be legally innocent factual guilty Defendants convicted of capital crimes even though those crimes were accidental or self defense III Miscarriages of Justice in Pre Gregg 1976 Capital Cases A Borchards Research Yale law professor Edwin Borchad conduct the pioneering study of miscarriages of justice in the US Responding to a challenge from DA in MA who contended that innocent men are never convicted Borchard accumulated cases of 65 people who belied his belief B Bedau s Research One of the first scholars to publish a study of miscarriages of justice exclusively in capital cases or potentially capital cases in the US Between 1893 and 1962 there were 74 cases had innocent members arrested and indicted C Research by Bedau and Radelet Joint effort to document miscarriages of justice Cataloged 416 cases involving 496 defendants who were later found to be innocent 23 people were executed 22 people reprieved 72hrs before execution 84 were convicted prior to 1976 and the implementation of super due process IV Miscarriages of Justice in Post Gregg 1976 Capital Cases despite Super Due Process Research reveals that 16 of the wrongful convictions in capital cases of the 23 wrongful executions occurred between 1976 and the summer of 1991 after the reimposition of the death penalty and super due process Under post Gregg statues and super due process there has been an average of 6 7 wrongful convictions same as the previous period DP Info Center reports that since 1973 1 death row inmate released for every 9 that had been executed ratings have showed that the avg number B Examples from News of innocent DR inmates being released has been increasing released per year Averages are based on only on of those wrongful convictions does not appear to make much of a difference Reasons that prosecutors may not retry a case The prosecutor was barred from using some of the evidence against the defendant by the appellate court Incriminating evidence against the defendant was misplaced or destroyed Witnesses against the defendant often corporators either have or have not received the prosecutors incentive to testify and have no incentive to testify Key witnesses may have trouble recalling what occurred thus injecting doubt into the prosecutors case Because of the passage of time prosecution witnesses may have trouble recalling what occurred The public may no longer support a prosecution because their feelings about the case have changed or they are no longer interested time Wayne Williams the so called Atlanta child murderer arrested on June 21 and later convicted of killing 2 ex felons Sentenced to 2 life terms Police linked him to 21 26 murderers Fulton County kept him in prison even though murders are still increase In 1984 Larry Hicks of IN won his freedom 2 weeks before his scheduled execution apparently an innocent Earl Charles executed and freed after proving that he was in Florida at the Randall Dale Adams was released from TC prisons subject of The Thin Blue Line once came within 3 days of execution despite maintaining his innocence Leonel Herrera executed in TX for the murder of 2 police officers Rejected evidence that his brother committed the crime Anson Avery Maynard Death sentence was commuted to life in prison in NC had been convicted for killing his partner The killer of Henry was in Jesse Dwayne Jacobs Executed in TX two days prior the SC denied his stay even though the state of RX conceded he did not kill the victim Juan Melendez released from FL death row after 18 years for a murder he did not commit a cosmetologist There are 5 more people see if you need to know C Wrongful Executions under Post Gregg 1976 Statues Documenting cases of innocent persons executed is an extraordinarily difficult task there is always a degree of uncertainty because it is impossible to right the record James Adam black man convicted of 1st degree murder and executed in FL Bedau and Radelet cite Edward who was executed on MS doubted his guilt but did not meet their conservative definition of innocent Roger Coleman and 26 people may have been executed in error in the United States since 1976 and the implementation of super due process V Errors in Capital Cases while most errors are probably never discovered there are two different types Harmless Errors One that by proof beyond a reasonable doubt did not contribute to the verdict Serious or Prejudicial error one that can be shown by the defendant to have likely affected the outcome of the trial or to be the type of error that generally results in reversals In addition the error has to be properly preserved Prior to mid1960s any mistake especially a violation of rights was considered serious or prejudicial even if it did not affect the outcome courts would almost always reverse the decisions People argued that it allowed prisoners to escape on legal technicalities The Creation of the Chapman Rule in Chapman v CA provided that violations of a defendant s rights do not require remedy unless the error are serious or prejudicial At each appeal stage what constitutes serious or prejudicial error becomes more restrictive mostly due to the requirement that error be properly preserved Most states direct appeals courts will not grant relief based on error if three conditions are not met A timely objection was not made at trial A motion for a new trial based on the objections is not made in a timely fashion Objection is not
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