The risk that inno­cent peo­ple could be exe­cut­ed remains high, as illus­trat­ed by the two most recent exon­er­a­tions from death row. Ronald Kitchen was freed from prison Illinois after the state dis­missed all charges against him on July 7. He had spent 13 years on death row and a total of 21 years in prison. Governor George Ryan had com­mut­ed his sen­tence to life in 2003, along with all oth­er death row inmates. Kitchen’s orig­i­nal con­vic­tion was derived large­ly from a coerced con­fes­sion, hav­ing been sub­ject­ed to a tor­tur­ous inter­ro­ga­tion under the super­vi­sion of the noto­ri­ous police Commander Jon Burge. Herman Lindsey was freed from Florida​’s death row on July 9 after the state Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly ruled for his acquit­tal. The court not­ed: “[T]he State failed to pro­duce any evi­dence in this case plac­ing Lindsey at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder.…Indeed, we find that the evi­dence here is equal­ly con­sis­tent with a rea­son­able hypoth­e­sis of inno­cence.” Lindsey was con­vict­ed in 2006, clear­ly indi­cat­ing that wrong­ful con­vic­tions con­tin­ue to occur in capital cases.

There have now been 5 exon­er­a­tions in 2009, the oth­er three being Nathson Fields in Illinois, Paul House in Tennessee, and Daniel Moore in Alabama. Exonerations have occurred in 26 states. Since the start of 2000, there have been 51 exon­er­a­tions. During that same time, there have 572 exe­cu­tions, indi­cat­ing a dis­turb­ing error ratio. There were 4 exon­er­a­tions in 2008. For fur­ther descrip­tion of these cas­es with sources of infor­ma­tion and a list of all 135 peo­ple exon­er­at­ed since 1973, see DPIC’s Innocence pages. See also DPIC’s Press Release con­cern­ing the most recent exonerations.

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