first posted y10509
change 2009/1026
minor change 2009/1028

Michael L. Radelet, Hugo Adam Bedau, and Constance E. Putnam, In Spite of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases, Northeastern University Press, Boston MA, 1992; cloth, 399 pp. General observations: (1) Under a barrage of scholarly criticism, Radelet et al. have backed off their original assertion that all these 23 were actually innocent. Their new position is that since all the cases were troubling in some way, there is a good chance that one or more might be innocent. (2) The most common retort of death-penalty supporters is that even though there may have been problems with the death penalty in the early 1900s, those problems were resolved by the time the death penalty was revived in the 1970s. For that reason, Radelet et al. put special emphasis on the James Adams case, the only one of the 23 to arise since 1970. Reading what they had to say, however, I found it quite likely that Adams was guilty as charged.

MORE RECENT DOUBTS Texas: Cameron Todd Willingham, executed 2004 February Publicized 2009 October. Credible claims have emerged that Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in Texas 17 February 2004 for arson (killing his three young children), might have been innocent. The forensic evidence to prove the fire was deliberately set has been rebutted by more recent science. (Similar new scientific methods have refuted arson charges in some non-death-penalty cases.) Prosecution supporters claim that even without the forensic evidence, Willingham's behavior at the fire site (doing nothing to save his children -- but this is disputed) still points to guilt. Whether one buys that argument or not, it looks like there was enough "reasonable doubt" to question an irreversible death penalty. The decisive evidence against him may have been his scary tattoo. Other more recent doubtful cases are discussed below.

The 23 "innocents" cited by Radelet et al.