“In 2016, at least 60 pris­on­ers were exon­er­at­ed after hav­ing been con­demned to death, in coun­tries across the geo­graph­i­cal and polit­i­cal spec­trum,” accord­ing to a new report on wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions by the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. The report, Justice Denied: A Global Study of Wrongful Death Row Convictions, ana­lyzes risk fac­tors for exe­cut­ing the inno­cent that are endem­ic in death penal­ty cas­es irre­spec­tive of where they are tried, and makes rec­om­men­da­tions for sys­temic reform. The six­ty exon­er­a­tions in just one year ​“rep­re­sent[ ] only a tiny frac­tion of those who are cur­rent­ly on death row for a crime they did not com­mit,” the report says. ​“Few inno­cent pris­on­ers are able to obtain access to the courts, either because they lack lawyers or because there are no pro­ce­dur­al mech­a­nisms avail­able by which they can present new evi­dence of inno­cence.” The study illus­trates sys­temic risk fac­tors for wrong­ful con­vic­tions that are present wher­ev­er cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is prac­ticed, high­light­ing cas­es from Cameroon, Indonesia, Jordan, Malawi, Nigeria, and Pakistan. According to the report, these fac­tors include inef­fec­tive assis­tance of legal coun­sel, tor­ture and coer­cion, mis­con­duct by offi­cials, racial and eth­nic dis­crim­i­na­tion, false or mis­lead­ing foren­sic evi­dence, and mis­tak­en eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It rec­om­mends, among oth­er reforms, that states pro­vide ade­quate fund­ing and train­ing for cap­i­tal defense lawyers, pro­vide mean­ing­ful access to appel­late review, allow for post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing, record all police inter­ro­ga­tions, and pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion to those who are exon­er­at­ed. The Center chose the six coun­tries whose sys­tems it high­light­ed ​“not because their legal sys­tems are unique­ly flawed, or because they con­tribute a greater num­ber of wrong­ful con­vic­tions com­pared to their peers,” the report says, but ​“because they rep­re­sent a diver­si­ty of geo­graph­ic regions and legal sys­tems.” While the risk fac­tors for wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions play out dif­fer­ent­ly from coun­try to coun­try, the expe­ri­ence of each coun­try illus­trates the gap between the legal pro­tec­tions afford­ed on paper to those fac­ing the death penal­ty and the man­ner in which those safe­guards are imple­ment­ed in prac­tice. The report con­cludes: ​“Every coun­try that retains the death penal­ty — from the poor­est to the most wealthy — runs the risk that inno­cent per­sons will be exe­cut­ed. No crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is per­fect, and the risk of error can nev­er be entire­ly elim­i­nat­ed. The only way to com­plete­ly exclude the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent is to abol­ish the death penalty altogether.”

The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, which ​“aims to bridge crit­i­cal gaps in research and advo­ca­cy around the death penal­ty” by pro­vid­ing data, pub­lish­ing reports, and advo­cat­ing for the imple­men­ta­tion of fairer laws.

(Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, Justice Denied: A Global Study of Wrongful Death Row Convictions, January 2018.) See Innocence and International.

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