Craig Watkins (pictured), the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, recently called for a review of the state’s capital punishment system. Since becoming D.A. in 2007, Watkins has initiated a conviction-integrity unit to examine criminal cases in the county. Since 2001, Dallas County has exonerated 27 inmates, including 22 through DNA evidence, most during Watkins’s tenure. None of these inmates were from death row. Regarding the death penalty, Watkins said, “I think it's a legitimate question to have, to ask: `Have we executed someone that didn't commit the crime?’” Watkins, the first African-American district attorney in Texas, said he is concerned about allegations of faulty evidence or state misconduct that could have led to capital convictions. He is calling on state legislators to review death penalty procedures to ensure the punishment is fairly administered. Watkins recently revealed that his great-grandfather, Richard Johnson, was executed in Texas almost 80 years ago. He remarked, "I think the reforms we've made in our criminal justice system are better than any other state in this country. But we still need reforms. And so, I don't know if I'm the voice for that. I just know, here I am, and I have these experiences."
A recent article in the New York Times discussed the most common reasons why suspects under interrogation confess to crimes they did not commit. The article, adapted from “Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America,” a forthcoming book written by David Shipler, observed an overrepresentation of children, the mentally ill, those with intellectual disabilities, and those who are drunk or high among suspects who made confessions that were later proven false. Shipler concludes, “They are susceptible to suggestion, eager to please authority figures, disconnected from reality or unable to defer gratification. Children often think, as Felix did, that they will be jailed if they keep up their denials and will get to go home if they go along with interrogators. Mature adults of normal intelligence have also confessed falsely after being manipulated.” Shipler also pointed out that interrogators are trained in various techniques to induce suspects to waive constitutional rights and to get suspects talking. He writes, “Officers are taught to use all the tricks and lies that courts permit within the scope of the Fifth Amendment’s shield against self-incrimination.” According to the Innocence Project, false confessions are among the most prevalent causes of wrongful convictions. False confessions played significant roles in roughly 24% of approximately 289 convictions later reversed by DNA evidence, among which were cases that would have resulted in execution.
Alabama recently set an execution date for Thomas Arthur (pictured), who was convicted of a murder that took place 30 years ago. Arthur has always maintained his innocence, but has been denied access to DNA evidence that might lead to a different verdict. As Andrew Cohen pointed out in an investigative piece in The Atlantic, Arthur is scheduled for execution on March 29, despite the confession of Bobby Ray Gilbert to the crime for which Arthur is facing execution. There was no physical evidence that linked Arthur to the murder, and his sentence was secured almost entirely by the testimony of the victim’s wife, Judy Wicker. At first, Wicker told the authorities that Arthur was not involved in the crime, but when she was convicted for hiring someone to murder her husband, she arranged a deal with the prosecution. In exchange for a recommendation of early release from prison, she changed her original testimony and implicated Arthur. Since then, Gilbert has testified under oath to the murder. Gilbert said he had an affair with Wicker and soon agreed to kill her husband. State courts, however, have ruled that Gilbert’s confession was not credible, and have opposed DNA testing on an item recovered from the crime scene that could identify who was actually involved in the crime. Arthur's attorneys have agreed to pay for the DNA testing.
Raymond Bonner's new book, Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, is about to be published and was 
A recent editorial in Nebraska's Journal Star urged support for a bill to replace the death penalty with a sentence of life in prison. Among the reasons cited for its position was the risk of executing an innocent person. The editorial noted that advancements in DNA testing have shown the fallibility of the current system: “Seventeen people who were on death row have been set free after DNA testing proved they were wrongly convicted.” The editorial also pointed to more than 250 convictions that have been overturned nationwide because of DNA testing, including the Nebraska defendants known as the "Beatrice Six," who were wrongfully convicted of rape and murder but later exonerated through DNA testing. The paper cautioned against supporting the death penalty on the basis of one horrific case: “[E]ven if the system worked without flaw in that particular case, there can be no guarantee that it will work that way every time. And if the system cannot work without error - as the facts show - then the death penalty cannot be justified. Sooner or later, an innocent person will die at the hands of the state of Nebraska." Read full editorial below.
Tyrone Noling (pictured) is an inmate on Ohio’s death row whose guilt has been called into doubt by a lack of physical evidence, recanting witnesses and refusal by the state to conduct a DNA test. Andrew Cohen, writing in a recent issue of The Atlantic, compared Noling's case to that of Troy Davis, who was executed in Georgia in 2011, despite doubts about his guilt. Noling was convicted of the 1990 murders of an elderly couple in their home. Initially, there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and no witnesses against him. When an aggressive investigator took over the case, some witnesses began giving statements against Noling. Cohen reports that all of these witnesses have since recanted their statements, claiming they were pressured by the prosecutor. In 2009, 13 years after the original trial, prosecutors provided defense attorneys with handwritten police notes from the investigations in 1990 in which a witness identified another man as having committed the murders. The state is currently refusing DNA testing of evidence collected from the crime scene that might place this man at the scene of the crime.
Jim Petro (pictured), former Attorney General of Ohio, strongly supported the death penalty as a state legislator, believed the state would save money because of the death penalty, and that it would act as a deterrent. But, he recently said, "Neither of those things have occurred, so I ask myself, 'Why would I vote for it again?' I don't think I would. I don't think the law has done anything to benefit society and us. It's cheaper and, in my view, sometimes a mistake can be made, so perhaps we are better off with life without parole." He added, "We are probably safer, better and smarter to not have a death penalty." Many of Petro's concerns are in his book, False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent, in which he underscores the risks of mistake and identifies flaws in how police and prosecutors have handled capital cases. He also noted that many prosecutors recognize these problems: "I would bet certainly well over half the prosecutors in the country looking at this book would ultimately agree with most of the issues," he said.
On January 23, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the state of Ohio challenging the unconditional writ of habeas corpus and bar to the re-prosecution of Joe D'Ambrosio (pictured), thus ending the capital case. He has now been freed from death row with all charges dismissed. A federal District Court had first overturned D'Ambrosio's conviction in 2006 because the state had withheld key evidence from the defense. The federal court originally allowed the state to re-prosecute him, but just before trial the state revealed the existence of even more important evidence and requested further delay. Also the state did not divulge in a timely manner that the key witness against D'Ambrosio had died. In 2010, the District Court barred D’Ambrosio’s re-prosecution because of the prosecutors’ misconduct. The court concluded that these developments biased D'Ambrosio's chances for a fair trial, and hence the state was barred from retrying him. District Court Judge Kathleen O'Malley wrote: “For 20 years, the State held D’Ambrosio on death row, despite wrongfully withholding evidence that ‘would have substantially increased a reasonable juror’s doubt of D’Ambrosio’s guilt.’ Despite being ordered to do so by this Court … the State still failed to turn over all relevant and material evidence relating to the crime of which D’Ambrosio was convicted. Then, once it was ordered to provide D’Ambrosio a constitutional trial or release him within 180 days, the State did neither. During those 180 days, the State engaged in substantial inequitable conduct, wrongfully retaining and delaying the production of yet more potentially exculpatory evidence… To fail to bar retrial in such extraordinary circumstances surely would fail to serve the interests of justice.”