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Tag: death row
FBI Failed To Disclose ‘Tainted’ Death Row Evidence

FBI Failed To Disclose ‘Tainted’ Death Row Evidence

Washington (AFP) — Flawed forensic work uncovered 17 years ago was used in the “tainted” convictions of some 60 US death row inmates, at least three of whom have since been executed, an FBI internal report said.

The problems were detected by the FBI’s inspector general’s office, which, in a 1997 report, found serious irregularities in the work of 13 examiners.

But in the years that followed, the U.S. Justice Department failed to notify state justice officials that suspect testimony and flawed evidence had been used to secure some capital convictions, an inspector general’s report said.

“The department and the FBI did not take sufficient steps to ensure that the capital cases were the … top priority and were treated with urgency,” said the report released late Wednesday.

Specifically, FBI and Justice Department officials failed to let state penal officials know that the “convictions of capital defendants could be affected by involvement of any of the 13 criticized examiners.”

Inmates in some instances were only told about irregularities with the evidence — provided by investigators at an FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, outside Washington — years after the fact.

One examiner in particular provided “faulty analysis and scientifically unsupportable testimony (that) contributed to the conviction of an innocent defendant who was exonerated 27 years later, and the reversal of at least five other defendants’ convictions,” the report said.

The review found that the time lag from when federal law enforcement learned of problems with the evidence, and when they notified their counterparts at the state level was “very prejudicial” for some inmates.

“For some, they caused irreversible harm,” the IG’s report said, which said that actions have been taken after the fact “to ensure these defendants received appropriate notice of the possibility that their convictions were supported by unreliable evidence.”

The report said that management failures allowed the rogue examiners to practice for years, but that the problems have been dealt with and “most of the employees responsible for the review have left the Department or the FBI.”

AFP Photo / Mat Hayward

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Missouri Death Row Inmate Wins Last-Minute Stay

Missouri Death Row Inmate Wins Last-Minute Stay

Washington (AFP) — A death row inmate facing execution Tuesday night won a last-minute stay on the grounds he might be mentally incompetent.

But the state of Missouri, where John Middleton, 54, had been scheduled to be put to death for killing three people in 1995, filed an appeal, meaning he could still be executed some time Wednesday.

Federal Judge Catherine Perry granted the stay less than an hour before Middleton was scheduled to die by lethal injection in the city of Bonne Terre, a minute after midnight Tuesday, said Missouri penal system spokesman Mike O’Connell.

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier had rejected an appeal from the inmate’s lawyers and given the green light for the execution to proceed.

But Perry ruled that Middleton was entitled to a stay. “He has shown a significant possibility to win on the merits, in that he has made a threshold showing that he is incompetent to be executed,” she wrote.

Middleton was a methamphetamine user with a history of psychiatric problems, according to the appeal filed with the Supreme Court.

The state of Missouri appealed Perry’s ruling, and the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals said it will issue a ruling Wednesday morning. That leaves open the possibility of his being executed as late as midnight Wednesday, said O’Connell.

Middleton was sentenced to death in 1997 for the killing of two men on June 10, 1995 and another two weeks later. Prosecutors say Middleton feared they might tell police he was a meth dealer.

If it takes place it will be the sixth execution so far this year in Missouri. Only Florida and Texas, with seven each, have put more people to death in 2014.

AFP Photo / Brendan Smialowski

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More Than 4 Percent Of Death Row Inmates Wrongly Convicted, Study Says

More Than 4 Percent Of Death Row Inmates Wrongly Convicted, Study Says

By Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — A new study argues that more than 4 percent of all defendants who have been sentenced to death — and who remain under threat of execution — are probably innocent.

In a paper published this week in the journal PNAS, a team of researchers statistically examined the cases of 7,482 death row convictions from 1973 to 2004.

Using a so-called survival analysis mathematical model, study authors estimated that if all death-sentence defendants remained under sentence of death indefinitely, at least 4.1 percent would be exonerated.

By the same token, authors concluded that although the number of innocent people who have been executed was “comparatively low,” the percentage of innocent people who have had their death sentences commuted to life is even greater.

“The great majority of innocent defendants who are convicted of capital murder in the United States are neither executed nor exonerated,” Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School, wrote with his colleagues Monday. “They are sentenced, or resentenced to prison for life, and then forgotten.”

Gross, whose colleagues included biostatisticians from the American College of Radiology and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, said the differing rates had to do with the unique workings of the U.S. justice system.

Specifically, the cases of defendants actively awaiting execution on death row receive the most intense scrutiny of all criminal convictions. Prisoners who have had their sentences reduced to life in prison receive much less scrutiny, authors argued.

“The threat of execution is the engine that drives the process of exonerating innocent death row prisoners, and it is likely that this process becomes more painstaking as inmates approach their execution dates,” authors wrote.

“Courts and executive officials explicitly recognize that it is appropriate to take the possibility of innocence into account in deciding whether to reverse a conviction for procedural error or commute a death sentence to life imprisonment. … As a result, those who are resentenced to punishments less than death are more likely to be innocent than those who remain on death row.”

In the time period examined, authors wrote that 943 people had been executed, or roughly 13 percent of the 7,482 death sentences imposed.

By contrast, 117, or roughly 2 percent, were exonerated. An additional 2,675, or roughly 36 percent of the total, had their sentences commuted. (The number of people who died on death row but who were not executed was 298, or 4 percent.)

Study authors wrote that the most charged question regarding capital punishment was how many innocent defendants have been executed.

“We cannot estimate that number directly but we believe it is comparatively low,” authors wrote. “If the rate were the same as our estimate for false death sentences, the number of innocents executed in the United States in the past 35 years would be more than 50. We do not believe this has happened.

“Our data and the experience of practitioners in the field both indicate that the criminal justice system goes to far greater lengths to avoid executing innocent defendants than to prevent them from remaining in prison indefinitely.”

Casey Konstantín via Flickr.com