STUDY: ​“The Hidden Costs of Wrongful Capital Prosecutions in North Carolina”

A new study by North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation exam­ines the finan­cial and human costs of cas­es in which, ​“pros­e­cu­tors sought the death penal­ty despite a clear lack of evi­dence, result­ing in acquit­tal or dis­missal of charges.” 

The report found 56 such cas­es in North Carolina since 1989, in which inno­cent peo­ple spent a total of 112 years spent in jail, with $2.4 mil­lion spent in defense costs alone in these weak death penal­ty cas­es. The authors com­pare these cas­es to those in which peo­ple were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sent to death row, say­ing, ​“We found cas­es in which state actors hid excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence, relied on junk sci­ence, and pres­sured wit­ness­es to impli­cate sus­pects. In sev­er­al cas­es, there was no phys­i­cal evi­dence and charges were based sole­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of high­ly unre­li­able wit­ness­es, such as jail inmates, co-defen­dants who were giv­en lighter sen­tences in return for coop­er­a­tion, and paid infor­mants. Reliance on such wit­ness­es was a fac­tor in more than 60 per­cent of the cas­es we studied.” 

In addi­tion to the clear-cut time and finan­cial costs, the study also describes the effects of wrong­ful pros­e­cu­tions on the defen­dants: ​“In addi­tion to leav­ing many in finan­cial ruin, the state does not even do these exonerees the favor of clear­ing their crim­i­nal his­to­ries. They must request a court order to expunge their crim­i­nal records, an expen­sive and lengthy process. Those who were already liv­ing at the mar­gins of soci­ety often strug­gled to find jobs, and some fell into home­less­ness after they were released from jail.” 

The authors con­clude by con­trast­ing the intend­ed use of the death penal­ty with their find­ings: ​“A pun­ish­ment as seri­ous as exe­cu­tion should be pur­sued only in the most iron­clad cas­es: those with the strongest evi­dence of guilt and in which the cir­cum­stances of the crime make the defen­dant more cul­pa­ble than most — the ​‘worst of the worst.’ Yet, the real­i­ty is entire­ly dif­fer­ent. This report uncov­ers a sys­tem in which the threat of exe­cu­tion is used in the major­i­ty of cas­es, regard­less of the strength of the evidence.”