Entries tagged with “Debra Milke”
Issues
Sep 02, 2016
OUTLIER COUNTIES: Maricopa, Arizona — “Outrageously Exploited Power,” “Crippled” Defense, and Five Exonerations
Maricopa County, Arizona imposed 28 death sentences between 2010 and 2015 and, as described in a BuzzFeed news analysis of a new report on outlier death penalty practices, “stands out for its stark examples of the problems found across the counties that most often sentence people to death.” The report, Too Broken to Fix, by Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project, studied the nation’s 16 most prolific death-sentencing counties and found that Maricopa County exhibited systemic problems…
Issues
Women
,Mar 19, 2015
INNOCENCE: Debra Milke Exonerated from Arizona Death Row
UPDATE: On March 23, 2015, Judge Rosa Mroz officially dismissed the charges against Milke. Milke has been added to DPIC’s exoneration list. See Milke’s statement on her exoneration. PREVIOUSLY: On March 17, the Arizona Supreme Court denied a request by prosecutors that it review a lower court’s order that dismissed the charges against Debra Milke as a result of “egregious” police and prosecutorial misconduct and barring her retrial. The court’s decision effectively ends prosecutorial efforts to…
Issues
Dec 12, 2014
POSSIBLE INNOCENCE: Arizona Court Dismisses Charges Against Former Death Row Inmate
On December 11, an Arizona appeals court dismissed charges against Debra Jean Milke and barred retrial. Milke spent 22 years on death row on chargers of arranging the 1989 murder of her 4‑year-old son. She was the first woman sentenced to death in Arizona since 1932. In 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit overturned Milke’s conviction because the prosecution had withheld evidence about misconduct committed by their primary witness, Phoenix Detective Armando Saldate, who…
Issues
Oct 29, 2013
STUDIES: Prosecutorial Misconduct in Death Penalty Cases
In a four-part series on the conduct of prosecutors in capital cases, The Arizona Republic examined allegations by appellate attorneys that prosecutorial misconduct occurred in nearly half of the state’s capital cases since 2002. The study found that nearly half of the allegations were validated by the Arizona Supreme Court, though only two death sentences were vacated. The paper found there were seldom consequences to prosecutors for misconduct. Of all the allegations, only two resulted in…