Exonerated After Execution: 12 Men (And One Woman) Found Innocent After Being Put to Death
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.