Wrongful Use or Threat of Capital Prosecutions Implicated in Five Exonerations in 2018

At least five peo­ple were exon­er­at­ed in 2018 after hav­ing been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in cas­es that involved the mis­use or threat­ened use of the death penal­ty, a DPIC analy­sis of data accom­pa­ny­ing a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations has shown. The National Registry’s annu­al report on wrong­ful con­vic­tions, Exonerations in 2018, record­ed a record 151 new exon­er­a­tions across the United States in 2018, includ­ing 68 exon­er­a­tions result­ing from wrong­ful homi­cide con­vic­tions. Two of those exon­er­a­tions freed death-row pris­on­ers Vicente Benavides and Clemente Aguirre.

A record num­ber of the exon­er­a­tions in 2018 were the prod­uct of wrong­ful con­vic­tions obtained by police and/​or pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct (107) or perjury/​false accu­sa­tion (111), with both often occur­ring in com­bi­na­tion. The two also were the lead­ing fac­tors con­tribut­ing to wrong­ful homi­cide con­vic­tions, 79.4% of which involved police and/​or pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct (54 cas­es) and 76.5% of which involved perjury/​false accu­sa­tion (52 cas­es). Historically, those two fac­tors are the lead­ing caus­es of wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions. Both were present in more than two-thirds of the homi­cide exon­er­a­tions (47 cas­es, 69.1%) in 2018, includ­ing the wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions of Benavides and Aquirre. DNA evi­dence helped to exon­er­ate 14 of those wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of homi­cide in 2018, only 20.1% of homi­cide exon­er­a­tions. The pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed per­jured tes­ti­mo­ny or false wit­ness accu­sa­tions in all of the mur­der cas­es involv­ing DNA, and police and/​or pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct was also present in more than 60% of those cas­es. DNA helped to rebut false or mis­lead­ing foren­sic evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the pros­e­cu­tion in five of the homicide exonerations.

At least three oth­er homi­cide exon­er­a­tions in 2018 involved the wrong­ful use or threat of the death penal­ty. Bobby Joe Maxwell was cap­i­tal­ly pros­e­cut­ed in Los Angeles, California for a series of ten mur­ders and five rob­beries attrib­uted to the ​“Skid Row Stabber” in 1978 and 1979. No phys­i­cal evi­dence direct­ly linked Maxwell to the mur­ders and wit­ness­es failed to iden­ti­fy him or his voice in police line­ups. He won a new tri­al in 2010 after new evi­dence exposed the prosecution’s prison infor­mant as a ​“ser­i­al liar.” The pros­e­cu­tion dropped charges against Maxwell after he suf­fered a heart attack that left him comatose. Matthew Sopron was con­vict­ed of a dou­ble mur­der and sen­tenced to life with­out parole in 1998 in Chicago, Illinois after an 18-year-old pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness false­ly impli­cat­ed him after hav­ing been threat­ened with the death penal­ty. William Bigeck sub­se­quent­ly admit­ted that Sopron ​“had absolute­ly noth­ing to do with the mur­ders” and tes­ti­fied in post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings in 2018 that he would have done any­thing to avoid the death penal­ty and that he had changed his ini­tial state­ment to obtain a plea deal that took the death penal­ty off the table. Daniel Villegas was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der and sen­tenced to life in El Paso, Texas in August 1995 for a dri­ve-by dou­ble mur­der. The 16-year-old false­ly con­fessed to the mur­ders after a police detec­tive hand­cuffed him to a chair, threat­ened to take him to the desert and ​“beat his ass,” slapped him, and said he would die in the elec­tric chair if he didn’t con­fess. “[T]errified out of his mind,” Villegas con­fessed. The Texas state courts over­turned the con­vic­tion in 2012, cit­ing inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel. Presenting evi­dence of inno­cence at his third tri­al, Villegas was acquit­ted in October 2018.

(National Registry of Exonerations, Exonerations in 2018, April 9, 2019; DPIC ANALYSIS: 2018 Exoneration Report Shows Official Misconduct and Perjury Remain Leading Causes of Wrongful Homicide Convictions, Death Penalty Information Center, April 23, 2019.) See Innocence and Prosecutorial Misconduct.