Innocence and Prosecutorial Misconduct

Discussions With DPI

Robin Konrad, Director of Research and Special Projects, inter­views Isaiah McCoy, the nation’s 157^th 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.