The question is whether we deserve to kill. Bernard Troncale. The death penalty in America is a flawed, expensive policy, defined by bias and error. It targets the most vulnerable people in our society and corrupts the integrity of our criminal justice system. From police officers to family members of murder victims, Americans are recognizing that the death penalty does not make us safer. EJI provides legal assistance to people on death row, many of whom are innocent or wrongly convicted.
We provide representation at trial, on appeal, and in postconviction proceedings to people facing execution. We have documented widespread racial bias in the administration of the death penalty and we challenge racial discrimination in jury selection, sentencing, and throughout the system.
We protect vulnerable people facing execution, including people with mental illness who are uniquely at risk, and we produce reports about capital punishment and the ways in which public safety can be undermined by relying on this expensive and flawed punishment. For every nine people executed, one person on death row has been exonerated. The same factors drive wrongful convictions in non-capital cases and death penalty cases, including:. A record exonerations in involved witnesses who lied on the stand or falsely accused the defendant.
In 50 of these cases, the defendant was falsely accused of a crime that never happened. Official misconduct is more common in death penalty cases, especially if the defendant is Black.
The intense pressure to obtain a death sentence and the political stakes for police, prosecutors, and even judges can cause serious legal errors that contribute to wrongful convictions and death sentences. In Alabama alone, over death sentences have been invalidated by state and federal courts, resulting in conviction of a lesser offense or a lesser sentence on retrial.
Inadequate legal assistance, racial bias, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence make Mr. The failure to provide adequate counsel to capital defendants and people sentenced to death is a defining feature of the American death penalty. Whether a defendant will be sentenced to death typically depends on the quality of his legal team more than any other factor.
Some lawyers provide outstanding representation to capital defendants. But few defendants facing capital charges can afford to hire an attorney, so they are appointed lawyers who are frequently overworked, underpaid, and inexperienced in trying death penalty cases. Capital cases are especially complex, time-intensive, and financially draining. Lawyers representing indigent capital defendants often face enormous caseloads, caps on fees, and a critical lack of resources for investigation and expert assistance.
Too often they fail to adequately investigate cases, call witnesses, and challenge forensic evidence. Capital defense l awyers have slept through parts of trial, shown up in court intoxicated, or done no work to prepare for sentencing. Neither the gun nor the earrings were ever recovered. As police followed the lead, they learned that the tipster heard the information from someone who heard it from someone else.
It was a rumor on top of a rumor, but police pursued the lead. Dennis was confident he would not be wrongfully convicted because he had a solid alibi. He was on a bus across town during the murder, and he had waved the one of his neighbors from the bus. Dennis was freed in May Also while facing death for a crime he did not commit, he missed his daughters growing up.
They were just one and four-years old when he was wrongfully convicted. While too young to fully comprehend what was happening, Dennis told Philadelphia Magazine that they both cried when the guilty verdict was read. They are now grown, and one has a child. He calls to check in on them everyday and visits them when he can. He told Philadelphia Magazine that he is careful to drive below the speed limit and that he avoids staying out too late because he is terrified of anything that might result in a police encounter.
Williams was stabbed more than times, and Bareis was stabbed twice. Police found a bloody inch kitchen knife between their house and the house next door. Aguirre-Jarquin is a Honduran immigrant who washed dishes and prepped food at a restaurant. Police questioned Aguirre-Jarquin and his roommate, but they knew nothing about the crimes. However, Aguirre-Jarquin shortly after admitted that he had gone next door to get some beer the night before and saw the dead bodies.
He was arrested for tampering with evidence. Aguirre-Jarquin told the jury that on the night of the murder, he went through the front door that is aways unlocked to ask for some beer. After looking around and not finding the killer, he ran home, tossed the knife, put his clothes in a bag, and cleaned himself off. He did not call the cops because he was not a citizen and feared deportation.
Aguirre-Jarquin was convicted of two first-degree murders and burglary, and he was sentenced to death. Samantha Williams later admitted to killer her mom and Bareis. A mistrial was declared during jury selection, and in the second trial, the prosecution abruptly dismissed the charges while jury selection was still in progress.
Aguirre-Jarquin was released on a federal immigration court bond after the Department of Homeland Security placed an immigration hold on him. He is currently seeking asylum. Aguirre-Jarquin grew up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where he personally witnessed at least three murders. He and his friends estimated that a murder of someone they knew occurred at least once a month. Reflecting the well-documented disproportionate impact of the death penalty on people of color, seven of the 11 are Black and one is Latino, according to Durham.
The revelation that more innocent people than previously known came close to being executed is likely to give death penalty opponents fresh ammunition as they press the administration of President Joe Biden to impose a moratorium on capital punishment after an unprecedented 13 federal executions under former President Donald Trump. Biden is the first American president to oppose the death penalty.
While federal executions have effectively come to a halt since Biden took office last month, permanently ending the death penalty will require a congressional repeal, Durham said. According to the United Nations, all but 20 of its member states have abolished the death penalty either in law or in practice.
The U. Most executions in the United States take place at the state level. Almost everyone on death row was surely guilty. However, as federal courts began to more thoroughly review whether state criminal defendants were afforded their guaranteed rights to due process, errors and official misconduct began to regularly appear, requiring retrials.
When defendants were now afforded more experienced counsel, with fairly selected juries, and were granted access to scientific testing, some were acquitted and released. Since , former death-row prisoners have been exonerated of all charges related to the wrongful convictions that had put them on death row. It is now clear that innocent defendants will be convicted and sentenced to death with some regularity as long as the death penalty exists.
It is unlikely that the appeals process—which is mainly focused on legal errors and not on factual determinations—will catch all the mistakes. Reforms have been begrudgingly implemented, increasing both the costs and the time that the death penalty consumes, but have not been sufficient to overcome human error.
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