How many innocent men have been sentenced to death in US history?
 

Give me a percentage. It doesn't have to be an official estimate, just off the top of your head. So percentage-wise, how many innocent men (and women) do you believe were sentenced to death and executed in the history of the USA?

This is not an anti-death penalty thread. I just want to see how efficient we think the american judicial sistem is.


I say somewhere around 6 % ... maybe more.

99%.

Almost everyone claims to be innocent.

I only know of one guy, in texas i believe, dna cleared him

only 15 people. i knew 12 of them. great guys. was a shame what happened to them.

No idea.. you may be correct with at 6%

Reason for saying this is... forgetting the wrongful convictions, - there were a good number of individuals who should never have had the death penalty as a sentence. Yes, they (at least most), were 100% guilty, but the circumstances surrounding the offenses were not such that the death penalty is "appropriate".

I don't think there would ever be a way to determine that.

I bet the number is higher than most think.

just say the first number that comes to mind.

There is no way to know. They have stats of how many innocent people were sent to prison then freed with dna evidense... some of which were on death row and would have been put to death, but there is no real percent out there. With this rush-to-conviction society we live in though I'd say your 6% estimation is extremley conservative. I wouldn't be surprised if it's double that.

69 in the first number that comes to my head, but that's beside the point.

I'm thinking 10%. A guy in Pittsburgh was cleared after 20 years on death row. Plus on HBO about 2 month's ago they had a show about 10 different people wrongfully convicted of crimes and spend years of their life in jail. Theres several organizations that try to free as many people as it can.

It's sad though, dying for something you never did, but with compulsive liars and crazy people, you never know if they are innocent or not.

If you are talking about "US history" - hell... a substantial amount - could well be in the 1000's.

I think most people get screwed because the real liars are the wittnesses who point out anybody. Some of these freaks do it for money, for the attention, or just due to plain ignorance.

Add to your list - totally incompetent defense lawyers, convictions of children who were kept on death row till of legal age and executed, the era of "instant justice" from the "wild west", racially motivated convictions (forgetting the lynch mob "executions) ad nausea....

I must have known the other 3 because they ones I knew were real dirtbags.

All of them... If you ask em :)

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Only if they had DNA evidence back then.

Three out of the four I ever knew of were not exactly "dirtbags", but kids ranging from 9 to...think 14 years of age.

They just happened to kill one or both parents as kids. Kinda relevant and hitting on a recent topic - their parents (either one of both) were abusers and pedos and the three kids decided to retaliate and wipe them out.

They then sat on death row for around 10 years each and were eventually executed, - two, accompanied at their execution by the only friend they had, and a close friend of mine.

It's nice this pedo-fantasy marketing eh? :pimp