A recent issue of The Angolite, a mag­a­zine pub­lished by prison inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, high­lights the sto­ry of Joe Arridy, who was exe­cut­ed in 1939 in Colorado. Arridy was sen­tenced to death in 1937 for the mur­der and sex­u­al assault of a teenage girl. After his exe­cu­tion, facts point­ing to Arridy’s inno­cence grad­u­al­ly emerged. New evi­dence showed that he had been coerced into giv­ing a false con­fes­sion, that he was not in town at the time of the crime, and that anoth­er per­son had admit­ted to com­mit­ting the crime. In addi­tion, Arridy had an IQ of 46, and was eas­i­ly led by police. One psy­chi­a­trist, Dr. B.L. Jefferson, tes­ti­fied that Arridy had the mind of a child of about six years old and was not capa­ble in aid­ing in his defense or of giv­ing a reli­able con­fes­sion. On death row, Arridy spent his days play­ing with toys and request­ed ice cream for his last three meals. Witnesses say he stepped into the gas cham­ber still grin­ning like a lit­tle boy. On January 7, 2011, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter grant­ed Arridy a full and uncon­di­tion­al posthumous pardon.

(K. Meyers, ​“The Happiest Man on Death Row,” The Angolite, September/​October 2011; post­ed by DPIC, June 5, 2012). See Innocence and Intellectual Disability. See also DPIC’s exam­ples of inmates exe­cut­ed who may have been inno­cent.

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