Ethics

Another Innocent Man Freed From Death Penalty

By Ed Brayton

Balko has the details on yet another man convicted of multiple murders and sentenced to death and later found to be innocent. The evidence against him included a coerced confession and a jailhouse informant who was bribed by the police. He lost 19 years of his life.

Thanks to the work of Northwestern University Law School's death penalty clinic, another man wrongly convicted of murder walked free this week. Ronald Kitchen spent 13 of his 21 years behind bars on death row. He's also another case of someone who falsely confessed to a murder after intense questioning from police interrogators.

Illinois has sentenced 224 people to death since reinstating capital punishment in 1977. Since then, 20 have been exonerated. I'm not sure what an acceptable rate of error in death penalty cases would be, but nine percent seems awfully high, doesn't it?

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on July 10, 2009 (boomark / email).