Innocence

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a $14 million award to John Thompson, a former death row inmate in Louisiana who was exonerated after withheld evidence was revealed.  Thompson spent 18 years in prison, including 14 years in the solitary confinement of death row in Angola Prison.  He came within one month of being executed in 1999 when his attorneys discovered blood evidence that should have been turned over to the defense years ago.  The new evidence cleared Thompson of an armed robbery conviction, which in turn had influenced his trial for an unrelated murder.  At his re-trial on the capital murder charge, Thompson was acquitted in thirty-five minutes by a jury in 2003.  Thompson sued the District Attorney's Office of Orleans Parish in 2003 and won a jury verdict in 2007.  The jury also awarded $1 million for attorneys' fees.

Attorneys for Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis will have the opportunity to argue before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on December 9 in Atlanta. The Court will hear arguments on whether Davis can file a second federal challenge to his conviction based on new evidence of his innocence. The Court stayed Davis' execution shortly before he was to receive a lethal injection so that it could review the constitutional issues in his case.

A recent editorial in The Journal Star (Lincoln, Nebraska) expressed the paper's shock at how the death penalty distorted a state criminal investigation to the extent that six innocent people were convicted of a murder they did not commit. Defendants were pressured to offer erroneous testimony through the threat of facing the death penalty. “The wrongful convictions show how the death penalty can distort the search for justice,” the editorial stated. “Investigators supplied suspects suggestions on what could have happened. They showed photos of the crime scene.