By Alexis Garrett Stodghill
The execution of Troy Davis in Georgia last week despite tremendous doubt about his guilt has brought the issue of capital punishment into the national spotlight. As a country that supports use of the death penalty, America is in poor company with “the world’s great dictatorships and autocracies [such as] Iran, Zimbabwe, China, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Cuba, [and] Belarus” according to The Atlantic — while we are supposed to be the land of the free. Far above and beyond the politically nasty associations with capital punishment is of course the moral concern over accidentally putting innocent people to death. It is likely that the average American believes this is a rare occurrence worth the social value of the death penalty as a deterrent from violent crime. Unfortunately innocent people are often placed on death row. In a study of executions in 34 states between 1973 and 1995, Columbia University professor James Liebman found that: “An astonishing 82 percent of death row inmates did not deserve to receive the death penalty. One in twenty death row inmates is later found not guilty.” Most death row inmates do not have the resources or time necessary to determine their innocence before it is too late. Hopefully, Troy Davis’ case and others like his will show U.S. citizens how the death penalty destroys innocent lives. Over 1,000 people have been executed since 1976. We may never know how many went to death in error. Here are just a few who we know for sure were likely innocent — but this was discovered too late.
Larry Griffin
Griffin was executed by lethal injection in 1995 for the 1980 murder of Quenton Moss, a drug dealer in St. Louis. Griffin was convicted and received the death sentence based mainly on the testimony of a career criminal, Robert Fitzgerald, who later admitted to committing the crime himself. Fitzgerald also stated that the police pressured him into accusing Griffin. Griffin, like Troy Davis, maintained his innocence until the end.
David Wayne Spence
“Any intelligent person who takes a close and honest look at the David Wayne Spence case will see that it was a travesty,” The New York Times reported in 1997. Spence was convicted of murdering three teenagers in Texas in 1982 based on what many now believe were fabricated accounts by jail house stool pigeons eager for early release. He was executed by lethal injection, despite the fact that abundant physical evidence was found at the scene of the crime — and none of it matched Spence.
Leo Jones
Leo Jones was convicted of murdering a police officer in Florida in 1981 and was executed in 1998. He originally confessed to the crime, but later stated that his admission was coerced — with evidence pointing to the possibility that torture was used to extract a false guilty plea. Despite the fact that over 12 people fingered another man as the killer, Jones was electrocuted despite a plea to retry his case.
Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin
Radio host Tom Joyner won pardons for these distant ancestors who were executed for a murder they didn’t commit. Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin were landowners who were accused of murdering an elderly Confederate veteran in 1913 based solely on the testimony of one man who was a known criminal. Joyner cleared their names in 2009.
Gary Graham
Graham was executed in 2000 after 19 years on death row. In a case eerily similar to that of Troy Davis, Graham’s execution was also delayed for three hours for a last-second appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court for clemency, which was denied. Despite 33 reviews of his case, Graham could not escape his sentence. Yet, the only evidence against him was the testimony of one person “who said she saw the killer’s face for a few seconds through her car windshield, from a distance of 30-40 feet away” (Deathpenaltyinfo.org). His life was taken at 36.
Cameron Todd Willingham
Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of intentionally murdering his three children through three fires he allegedly set in their home. Despite the fact that experts later testified that the original evidence of arson was incorrectly assessed, his appeals were denied. He was executed in 2004, after which his cased continued to be explored by forensics experts. These scientists have underscored that there is no evidence that Willingham committed this crime, or that the fires were .
Lena Baker
Baker is the only woman to have been executed in the state of Georgia during the 20th Century. She was pardoned 60 years after her execution in 2005 by the state, who called the failure of the all white male jury to grant her clemency “a grievous error.” Baker was executed for shooting her employer in self-defense, who had evidently imprisoned her and was threatening her with death at the time of his killing. She shot him with the gun he had been attacking her with in a desperate act to save her life — hardly a murder.
Claude Jones
Claude Jones was executed in 2000 after being convicted of murdering Allen Hilzendager in 1990. A career criminal operating in the state of Texas, Jones was charged with the murder despite the lone piece of DNA evidence — a hair sample — later being determined to belong to the victim and not him. Former president George W. Bush — then the governor of Texas — denied Jones a stay of execution.
Ruben Cantu
Cantu was executed in Texas in 1993 for a 1984 murder he likely didn’t commit. In an unrelated incident, Cantu got into an altercation with an off duty police officer and shot at him — after the investigation into the crime he was eventually executed for had become stalled. In a strange twist of fate, after Cantu shot at the cop the case was re-opened with Cantu as the prime suspect. The Houston Chronicle did an investigative report essentially suggesting the strong possibility that police in the city framed Cantu in retaliation for shooting at their colleague.
Carlos DeLuna
Evidence that came to light in 2006 suggesting that DeLuna was executed for murder because of a case of mistaken identity. He died by lethal injection in Texas in 1989 for a 1983 stabbing that he maintains was committed by another man who he directly named, but was never investigated. The Chicago Tribune did a follow up investigation focusing on the family of the man named by the victim, Carlos Hernandez, also revealing other facts that made the prosecuting attorney question the ruling. Hernandez died in 1999, but reportedly repeatedly bragged about the fact that another man went to death row for his crimes to his relatives. Texas has executed almost a third of the people condemned to death in the United States since 1982.
Jesse Tafero
Jesse Tafero was executed in 1990 for murdering a state trooper in Florida, based largely on the testimony of a man who was present at the seat of the crime and took a plea bargain to avoid a death sentence. Walter Rhodes received a life sentence for his participation in the 1976 crime and fingered Tafero — but his sentence was later overturned based on the same evidence used to send Tafero to the electric chair. Tafero’s execution was one of the most gruesome in the state’s history and played a large part in Florida moving to death by lethal injection.
Ellis Wayne Felker
Ellis Wayne Felker was executed in 1996 for the brutal murder of a Georgia woman in 1981. During the period that he was held on death row, a box of evidence was found that included physical evidence possibly suitable for DNA testing and a signed confession from another man admitting to the crime — but it was hidden by the prosecution unlawfully during his case. Despite this, the Supreme Court of Georgia refused
