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We've believed it for years. With at least 135 people freed from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged, it seemed inevitable that one day, news of an execution of an innocent person would emerge.
For many years, however, our strong suspicion that innocent people have been executed has been no more than that - simply a strong suspicion. Once an execution occurs, there historically has been little opportunity to reflect on what has transpired. Overburdened attorneys and advocates have always moved to stop the next execution, knowing that the line is growing and hard choices in favor of the living must be made. Research and fact-finding take time and resources. Officials and wrongdoers who control the crucial evidence and have long hidden or stubbornly ignored the truth continue doing so.
Death penalty supporters maintain "the system works" and that no innocent person has been proven to be executed. In 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that there has not been "a single case - not one - in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops."
Justice Scalia is wrong.
Following up on a handful of investigations spearheaded by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) with a group of committed cooperating attorneys, the Innocence Project, The Justice Project, and students at Columbia, Michigan and several other law schools, some of the nation's best investigative journalists and leading newspapers have recently exposed grave errors leading to the execution of innocent people.
Coast to coast the death penalty system is on the defensive
Numbers tell part of the story. Executions reached a 10-year low in 2006, with 53 people executed, compared with a high of 98 people executed in 1999. Currently, executions are on hiatus in as many as eight states because of concerns surrounding how lethal injection works – and whether it is as painless and trouble-free as its backers maintain.
And by the time Lifelines went to press, legislation to abolish the death penalty had been filed in 18 states, with legislation advancing in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico and other proposals prepared to move forward in Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey.
Executions have been stayed from coast to coast, as Florida and California grapple with the question of how to prevent future botched executions. Other states also have stayed executions: Arkansas, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee. Indeed, more than one third of the nation’s approximately 3,350 death-row prisoners are in states where a moratorium exists on carrying out the death penalty.
North Carolina, perhaps more than any other state, symbolizes the current state of affairs. There, state law requires that a doctor participate in executions. However, the North Carolina Medical Board has passed a guideline warning that any doctor who participates in an execution may face sanctions. Executions are on hold, perhaps indefinitely, while state officials study whether they can “solve” the impasse. In Florida, then-Gov. Jeb Bush, a death penalty supporter, was forced to suspend executions and order a blue-ribbon panel to study how they were carried out.
NCADP has worked with activists in many of these states. In Florida, NCADP called for a fair and open process as the state studies its lethal injection protocols. In Florida and in a number of other states, NCADP also has provided expert witness testimony shining light on problems relating to lethal injection.
In South Dakota, facing an uphill battle, NCADP assembled a team of seasoned professionals to oppose efforts in the legislature to “fix” the state’s lethal injection protocol. And in Florida, NCADP helped shine media attention across the nation on the latest botched execution – that of Angel Nieves Diaz, who died 34 minutes after officials failed to properly insert needles into both of his arms. After the needles slipped, Diaz sustained lengthy chemical burns on both arms and, according to newspaper reporters who witnessed the execution, suffered intense pain during the execution process.
“Quietly but definitively, brick by brick, the foundation of the death penalty system is crumbling across the country,” reports Diann Rust-Tierney, NCADP’s executive director. “The latest developments only underscore the fact that from start to finish – from trial to faulty appeals processes to failed execution protocols – the death penalty is being exposed as a failed public policy.”
And by the time Lifelines went to press, legislation to abolish the death penalty had been filed in 18 states, with legislation advancing in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico and other proposals prepared to move forward in Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey.
