A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, highlighs flaws in Texas’s death penalty system that led to the execution of Claude Jones (pictured). Then-governor George Bush rejected Jones’s application for a reprieve. Bush was not informed that the reprieve would allow time for DNA tests to be performed on a strand of hair that was found at the crime scene. This hair had been attributed to Jones at his trial and was the only piece of evidence tying him to the crime scene. Following six years of litigation, DNA testing was finally performed on the hair, and results showed it belonged to the victim, not Jones. Scheck asserts that if this test had been done in 2000, when Jones was facing execution, Jones would have likely been spared and the conviction reversed. The hair “match” was the key evidence cited in a 3-2 decision made by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upholding Jones’s death sentence. Scheck calls for a critical look into the death penalty in America, quoting George Will that “capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.” Democrat and Republican Senators are introducing a bill, already approved by the House, that would establish a National Criminal Justice Reform Commission to help prevent wrongful convictions like the case of Claude Jones. Read full op-ed below.
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland granted clemency to Sidney Cornwell, reducing this sentence to life without parole. Cornwell faced execution on November 16 for a 1996 gang-related shooting in Youngstown. Attorneys for Cornwell argued that he grew up in an abusive environment and that he suffered from a genetic condition that contributed to his violent tendencies. The attorneys also said that Cornwell's death sentence was disproportionate to sentences handed out for similar killings in Mahoning County, and that the jury did not have the option of giving him a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Cynthia Mausser, chairwoman of the state parole board, and the only member who favored clemency for Cornwell said of the evidence presented at the clemency hearing, "I cannot conclude that it would have made no difference to the outcome of the penalty phase, as it seems reasonably probable that a juror may have viewed Cornwell and the other mitigation evidence presented in a more positive light. This evidence is significant enough to question the reliability of the outcome of the penalty phase and conclude that the exercise of executive clemency is warranted." Governor Strickland granted clemency in two other cases this year: 
Recent DNA tests raise serious doubts about the conviction of a man executed in Texas in 2000. The tests revealed that a strand of hair found at the scene of a liquor-store shooting did not belong to Claude Jones, as was originally implied by the prosecution. Instead, the hair belonged to the victim. Jones was executed for the murder of the store's owner. The strand of hair was the only piece of physical evidence that placed Jones at the scene of the crime, and this revelation raises the question of whether Texas executed the wrong person for the murder. Before his execution in 2000, Jones’s lawyers filed petitions for a stay with both a district court and with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, requesting that the strand of hair be submitted for DNA testing. The necessary DNA technology had not been developed at the time the crime in 1989, but was available in 2000. Both courts, along with then-Governor George W. Bush, denied Jones a stay of execution. Apparently, Gov. Bush was not even informed by his clemency advisors about the request for the DNA test. Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, said “The DNA results prove that testimony about the hair sample on which this entire case rests was just wrong. Unreliable forensic science and a completely inadequate post-conviction review process cost Claude Jones his life.”
On September 17, Governor Robert McDonnell announced that he would not grant clemency to Teresa Lewis, who is scheduled to be executed in Virginia on September 23. Requests for a commutation of her death sentence had come from thousands of individuals, from mental health groups, the European Union and novelist John Grisham. Many had pointed to the fact that two co-defendants in the murders that sent Lewis to death row had received life sentences, even though they actually carried out the killings. Information that became available after Lewis's trial showed that she has an IQ of 72, near the level of intellectual disability that would have rendered her death sentence unconstitutional. She also suffered from a dependent personality disorder. A letter from one of the co-defendants in prison indicated that he had manipulated Lewis into going along with the murder of her husband. Lewis still has a petition pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, and her attorneys have indicated they will ask the governor to reconsider his decision.