Five Innocent People Exonerated in Nebraska; Defendants Were Threatened with Death Penalty

Five peo­ple in Nebraska were recent­ly par­doned for a 1985 mur­der after new DNA evi­dence exclud­ed their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the crime. The group was also known as the ​“Beatrice Six.” The sixth man, the only one who had insist­ed on a jury tri­al, was exon­er­at­ed in October 2008 when pros­e­cu­tors declined to seek a new trial. 

The State Board of Pardons vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly on January 26 to par­don the five peo­ple who had plead­ed guilty or no con­test in rela­tion to the rape-mur­der. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said, ​“They are 100 per­cent inno­cent,” after DNA tests, not avail­able in the 1980s, found no evi­dence that any of the six were present or involved in the slay­ing, and instead point­ed to a now-deceased sus­pect not pros­e­cut­ed for the crime. 

The defen­dants who were par­doned had con­fessed to the crime to escape the threat of the death penal­ty. ​“We were all scared of it. They were all threat­en­ing us with it,” said James Dean, one of the five who was exon­er­at­ed. Ada Joann Taylor, anoth­er defen­dant, said, ​“They told me they want­ed to make me the first female on death row.” Their con­fes­sions were used to con­vict the sixth defen­dant, whose fight for his exon­er­a­tion led to the DNA test­ing that freed all six. 

Nebraska’s Legislative Judiciary Committee will hold pub­lic hear­ings on a mea­sure to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty on January 29.