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I would want to know why the convicted persons were exonerated. Was it a technicality in the arrest or court procedure? Were they found still stabbing their victims, but the prosecutor failed to disclose some piece of evidence in advance? I would expect if someone was clearly proven to be innocent, not merely exonerated on some technicality, the matter woudl be widely broadcast and discussed.
The standard for the death penalty is not "proof beyond a reasonable doubt". Rather, jurors are told they must have "no lingering doubt".
I'm not sure how they could differentiate between "no lingering doubt" and "no doubt".
Simple. Jared Loughner, the Colorado theater shooter, the two savages who raped the mom and daughters in Connecticut, then set their house on fire, the two teens who just killed a 15 year old girl in the name of the devil, etc., and basically anyone who is caught in the act is guilty beyond any lingering doubt. So is anyone for which there is incontrovertible video and other evidence. Anyone who appears guilty and confesses. Anyone who confesses but has some BS reason, like Affluenza or being bullied as a child. 14k+ murders a year...at least half of those killers fall into the above categories. Start with ridding ourselves of those murderers and move down the list from there.
We make this far more difficult than it needs to be, with all the legal wrangling and bleeding heart nonsense. Our system has gotten so far away from guilty vs not guilty that I wonder if it will ever get back to what is important.
There are cases where the evidence is so clear that the defendant did indeed murder a person or persons with premeditation. But many cases do not have evidence that provides that level of certitude.
Moreover, we ask jurors who have no real understanding of the certitude that our standard or proof requires to assess the reliability of evidence against a truly vague standard. And with a wrongful conviction rate that exceeds 9% in capital murder trials, its clear that we need to revise things en masse, at least as regards capital murder trials.
The wrongful conviction rate isn't 9%. The rate of wrongful convictions compared to executions is 9% (based only on the numbers you provided). There are many more convictions than executions. If the number of executions was where it should be, which is conceivably 100 times higher than it is, the percentage of wrongful convictions would be so low that it wouldn't even make the news.
There are far too many absolutely guilty people sitting on death row while attorneys suck up taxpayer funds on nonsense.
During this same time period, there have been 137 death row exonerations (this excludes 6 exonerations in 1976 that took place in the months prior to the reinstatement of the death penalty).
Is an execution to exoneration ratio of 10 to 1 reasonable?
Does this long established execution/exoneration ratio of 10 to 1 support that juries are reasonably competent enough to discern guilt in capital murder trials?
If juries are not competent enough to reasonably discern guilt in the most important of all trials, what would you expect to be their ability to discern guilt in criminal trials that deal with lesser charges?
What wrongful conviction rate would you expect actually exists in the criminal trials that are not capital murder trials?
Your post is misleading and ties together numbers from different stages in the process. The 137 exoneration occurred mostly because the legal process worked. The convictions were over-turned on appeal based on the lack of evidence or other issues. That is part of the check and balances in the legal system. If you want to judge if a jury system is competent you need to look at the number of trials versus exoneration. The are about 15,000 to 18,000 murder cases each year. Assuming only one in ten goes to trial, there have been between 57,000 and 68,400 trails since 1976. That mean a jury is overturn 1 time out of every 3000 trials.
The wrongful conviction rate isn't 9%. The rate of wrongful convictions compared to executions is 9% (based only on the numbers you provided). There are many more convictions than executions. If the number of executions was where it should be, which is conceivably 100 times higher than it is, the percentage of wrongful convictions would be so low that it wouldn't even make the news.
There are far too many absolutely guilty people sitting on death row while attorneys suck up taxpayer funds on nonsense.
Defendants who are convicted and sentenced to die enter a pipeline called death row. That pipeline is reduced when someone leaves death row and is executed; it is also reduced when someone is exonerated and set free.
From the time that executions were reinstated in 1976, there have been 1,366 executions and 137 exonerations.
1,366 + 137 = 1,503 convicted people who left death row through two very different doors.
137 / 1503 = 9.1% of those who left went through the wrongfully convicted door.
Your post is misleading and ties together numbers from different stages in the process. The 137 exoneration occurred mostly because the legal process worked. The convictions were over-turned on appeal based on the lack of evidence or other issues. That is part of the check and balances in the legal system. If you want to judge if a jury system is competent you need to look at the number of trials versus exoneration. The are about 15,000 to 18,000 murder cases each year. Assuming only one in ten goes to trial, there have been between 57,000 and 68,400 trails since 1976. That mean a jury is overturn 1 time out of every 3000 trials.
Defendants enter a criminal trial "presumed innocent".
A jury can properly acquit a defendant based on the evidence not meeting our "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" standard.
A jury can properly convict a defendant and sentence them to enter death row.
A jury can sentence an innocent defendant to death row. If that defendant is later determined to have been wrongfully placed on death row via exoneration and being set free, that means they were "wrongfully convicted".
I agree that the post conviction part of our system of jurisprudence eventually worked in these 137 cases of exoneration. However, the trial part of our system of jurisprudence produced a wrongful conviction, which on average had the 137 exonerated individuals assigned to death row for an average of 10 years (or so).
Moreover, these figures only reflect the output of capital murder trials (murder one, death penalty prosecution) where the defendant was sentenced to be executed. These figure do not reflect murder one trials where the death penalty was not sought or murder two trials.
Defendants who are convicted and sentenced to die enter a pipeline called death row. That pipeline is reduced out when someone leaves death row and is executed; it is also reduced when someone is exonerated and set free.
From the time that executions were reinstated in 1976, there have been 1,366 executions and 137 exonerations...and there have been many thousands of people who were convicted then put on death row, which is the real ratio we should be discussing.
1,366 + 137 = 1,503 convicted people who left death row through two very different doors.
137 / 1503 = 9.1% of those who left went through the wrongfully convicted door.
Technically accurate but unnecessarily inflammatory as a fact, as has been explained by two posters. But as we know, facts can be arranged to serve any agenda.
Nope, I have never been a fan of jury's. Most of the time they know nothing about the law and the numbers the OP cited are a perfect example of their incompetence. I'm also against the death penalty. Countries like Canada and Australia abolished the death penalty and they have some of the lowest intentional homicide rates in the world. Compare that to places like Texas who have execute more people than any other state BY FAR and ranks about in the middle for homicides per capita U.S.
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