National Registry of Exonerations Reports Record 58 Homicide Exonerations in 2015, Including 5 from Death Row

A report released on February 3 by the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) report­ed that a record 149 defen­dants were exon­er­at­ed in 2015, includ­ing 58 con­vict­ed of homi­cide, also a record for exon­er­a­tions in a sin­gle year. Overall, 39% of last year’s exon­er­a­tions were in homi­cide cas­es. Using slight­ly dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria than DPIC’s exon­er­a­tion list, the NRE report­ed five exon­er­a­tions of defen­dants who had been sen­tenced to death. 

The NRE report also report­ed a num­ber of cas­es in which police or pros­e­cu­tors had pur­sued cap­i­tal charges or threat­ened sus­pects or wit­ness­es with the death penal­ty. In sev­er­al cas­es, the threat of a death sen­tence led to false con­fes­sions or guilty pleas, includ­ing the 2007 wrong­ful con­vic­tion of Bobby Johnson (pic­tured at his release) in Connecticut. 

Johnson, who has an IQ of 69 and is bare­ly lit­er­ate, was 16 years old when he was arrest­ed. According to the report, Johnson con­fessed to the mur­der “[a]fter two inter­ro­ga­tion ses­sions — dur­ing which the detec­tives lied and said there was phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing Johnson to the crime, and false­ly told him he could get the death penal­ty but that they would get him pro­ba­tion instead.” His attor­ney con­duct­ed no inves­ti­ga­tion, and Johnson was sen­tenced to 38 years. He was exon­er­at­ed in 2015 after new attor­neys were able to present foren­sic evi­dence link­ing the mur­der weapon to another suspect. 

Another 2015 exoneree, Shawn Whirl, who was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in Illinois in 1991, was tor­tured into giv­ing a false con­fes­sion and pled guilty to avoid the death penal­ty. In yet anoth­er case, Hannah Overton was charged with cap­i­tal mur­der and sen­tenced to life with­out parole for the alleged ​“salt poi­son­ing” mur­der of her fos­ter son. In her case, Texas pros­e­cu­tors with­held from the defense excul­pa­to­ry infor­ma­tion about the lev­els of salt in the child’s blood, and med­ical evi­dence lat­er indi­cat­ed that there was no mur­der at all, but that the child’s death was linked to a genetic disorder. 

The report cred­its some of the growth in the num­ber of exon­er­a­tions to pros­e­cu­tors’ increased will­ing­ness to revis­it con­vic­tions, evi­denced by the increas­ing num­ber of Conviction Integrity Units with­in pros­e­cu­tion offices, but cau­tioned that the per­for­mance of these unit’s nation­wide ​“has been high­ly vari­able and some have been crit­i­cized as mere window dressing.”