Wrongful execution is a
miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by
capital punishment, the "death penalty." The existence of wrongful executions is one of the arguments presented by the opponents of capital punishment.
[1]A number of people have been proclaimed innocent victims of the death penalty.[2][3][4] Some claim that at least 39 executions have been carried out in the U.S. in the face of compelling evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt. However, of this list several were sentenced based on forensics, DNA evidence and guilty pleas. [5]
Of the cases, one of the most often talked about is the execution of Jesse Tafero in Florida. Tafero, a convicted rapist and drug dealer, was convicted along with an accomplice, Sonia Jacobs, of murdering two police officers in 1976 while the two were fleeing drug charges; each was sentenced to death based partially on the testimony of a third person, Walter Rhodes, a prison acquaintance of Tafero's who was an accessory to the crime and testified against the pair in exchange for a lighter sentence. Jacobs's death sentence was commuted in 1981. In 1982, Rhodes recanted his testimony and claimed full responsibility for the crime. Despite Rhodes's admission, Tafero was executed in 1990. In 1992 the conviction against Jacobs was quashed and the state subsequently did not have enough evidence to retry her. She then entered an Alford plea and was sentenced to time served. It has been presumed that, as the same evidence was used against Tafero as against Jacobs, Tafero would have been released as well had he still been alive.[6]
Newly-available DNA evidence has allowed the exoneration and release of more than 15 death row inmates since 1992 in the US,[9] but DNA evidence is only available in a fraction of capital cases. Kirk Bloodsworth was the first American to be freed from death row as a result of exoneration by DNA fingerprinting. Ray Krone is the 100th American to have received the death penalty and later be exonerated.
