Innocence and Prosecutorial Misconduct

Robin Konrad, Director of Research and Special Projects, interviews Isaiah McCoy, the nation’s 157th death-row exoneree, and his lawyers, Michael Wiseman and Herbert Mondros. McCoy was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in Delaware in 2012. After winning a new trial in 2015, he was acquitted of all charges in January 2017. McCoy’s case featured several systemic problems that plague the death penalty system: a lack of physical evidence, eyewitnesses who received deals from the prosecutor and told multiple versions of the story about the crime, a non-unanimous jury recommendation for a death sentence, and a prosecutor whose misconduct in the case was so outrageous that he was suspended from practicing law. McCoy and his lawyers explain how these factors contributed to his wrongful conviction, discuss his efforts to be exonerated, and describe McCoy’s life since exoneration.