25 Innocent People Executed Since 1900, ACLU Study Claims
Dublin Core
Title
25 Innocent People Executed Since 1900, ACLU Study Claims
Subject
Death penalty
Capital punishment--Florida.
Creator
Romaner, Michael
Source
The Florida Times-Union
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Date
1985-11- 14
Rights
The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source.
Format
2 jpg
300 dpi
Language
English
Coverage
Florida
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
GAINESVILLE – The American Civil Liberties Union is hoping to rekindle the death-penalty debate with the release of a study yesterday claiming that at least 343 innocent people have been convicted of murder and other capital crimes since 1900.
Professors Hugo Adam Bedau of Tufts University, a longtime opponent of capital punishment, and Michael L. Radelet of the University of Florida said they were convinced that of the 7,000 individuals executed in this century, 25 were erroneously convicted – including a man executed in Florida last year.
Radelet said he and Bedau had to use their own judgment in determining innocence because “the states never admit putting a man to death by mistake.”
The list include such famous defendants as Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists who were executed in 1927 for killing a paymaster and his guard; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953 after the conviction for selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union; and Bruno Richard Hauptmann, electrocuted in 1936 for the murder of the infant son of aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. All three cases spawned a host of contradictory studies of whether the convictions were justified.
The research, presented yesterday to a national conference of criminologists in San Diego, also listed 19 people on Death Row it said came within 72 hours of being executed when their innocence was discovered. And many other victims of injustices spent years in prison in capital cases, the professors said.
“Since 1900, there have been innocent people on Death Row nearly every year,” Radelet said. “Based on that, I would bet every cent I’ve got that there are innocent people on Death Row today.”
About 1,600 prisoners are on Death Row in the United States according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
“These horrible facts are dramatic proof of the ongoing fallibility of our death-sentencing laws,” said Henry Schwarzschild, director of the ACLU’s capital punishment project. “Judges, legislators and the American public are entitled to know about the unavoidable risk of executing the innocent.”
Radelet and Bedau, author of The Death Penalty in America, have spent the last three years examining convictions in capital crimes.
“I admit in many of these cases that had I sat on the jury, I would have found the guy guilty, also,” Radelet said yesterday. “Jurors, like the rest of us, are human beings. And human beings make mistakes.”
The Radelet-Bedau study –ts 343 convictions, all but 25 of which were later overturned – not because of legal technicalities, Radelet said, but because innocence was established.
Lawyers representing Death Row inmates already are preparing to use the study as a basis for defending their clients.
Michael Mello, an attorney with a newly created office in Tallahassee that represents Florida’s indigent Death Row population, said yesterday he intended to file an appeal next week, based on the study, on behalf of Joe Spaziano.
Gov. Bob Graham signed a death warrant last week for Spaziano, who was convicted of killing a Seminole County woman. He is scheduled to be executed Dec. 3.
“Up until Mike’s study, we suspected intuitively that there were a lot of miscarriages of justice,” Mello said. “But what we now have is documentation of that.”
But challenges of that documentation are likely.
Last year, James Adams was executed for the murder of a Florida rancher. Radelet and Bedau contend that Adams was innocent. His case is the only instance cited in the study of an innocent man being executed in the last 20 years.
Among evidence presented in the study was a statement from a witness who said he saw someone fleeing the rancher’s house and that person “was positively not Adams.” The study also indicates that hair found clutched in the victim’s hand did not match Adams’ hair.
“Much of this exculpatory information was not discovered until the case was examined by a skilled investigator the month before Adams’ execution. Governor Graham, however, refused to grant even a short stay to try to resolve these questions,” the study said.
Radelet said it was a difficult decision for him to include the Adams case in the study. He said he expected backlash from it, but “I really believe that James Adams was innocent.”
Art Wiedinger, assistant general counsel to Graham, said he was surprised that the Adams case was included in the report. He said Graham took extreme care in handling the case and reviewed the materials Radelet referred to.
“They did supply memorandum, I think, the week before the execution, and based on that review, the governor felt there was no basis to overturn the conviction,” Wiedinger said.
He said that not having read the study he had no opinion on whether it might alter popular opinion on the death penalty. But he said U.S. and Florida law require the exercise of extreme caution in capital cases. “Given all those safeguards, I think that meets all the problems.”
Ernest van den Haag, a Fordham University professor and one of the nation’s leading authors promoting the death penalty, said yesterday from his New York home that it should be no surprise to anyone that innocent people have been executed.
“Trucks do run over innocent people once in a while. We continue to drive trucks because we feel the advantages outweigh the costs,” he said. “I should say the same is true in justice. The advantages of having the death sentence outweigh the costs of making an occasional mistake.”
Van den Haag also said he did not expect the study to result in any policy changes – “none whatsoever, because anyone with common sense knows that mistakes will be made.”
Radelet said he hoped the study eventually would bring about the abolition of the death penalty. But he said he would be pleased if people “will remember that the possibility of convicting innocent people is very real.”
This report contains material from wire services.
Professors Hugo Adam Bedau of Tufts University, a longtime opponent of capital punishment, and Michael L. Radelet of the University of Florida said they were convinced that of the 7,000 individuals executed in this century, 25 were erroneously convicted – including a man executed in Florida last year.
Radelet said he and Bedau had to use their own judgment in determining innocence because “the states never admit putting a man to death by mistake.”
The list include such famous defendants as Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists who were executed in 1927 for killing a paymaster and his guard; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953 after the conviction for selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union; and Bruno Richard Hauptmann, electrocuted in 1936 for the murder of the infant son of aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. All three cases spawned a host of contradictory studies of whether the convictions were justified.
The research, presented yesterday to a national conference of criminologists in San Diego, also listed 19 people on Death Row it said came within 72 hours of being executed when their innocence was discovered. And many other victims of injustices spent years in prison in capital cases, the professors said.
“Since 1900, there have been innocent people on Death Row nearly every year,” Radelet said. “Based on that, I would bet every cent I’ve got that there are innocent people on Death Row today.”
About 1,600 prisoners are on Death Row in the United States according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
“These horrible facts are dramatic proof of the ongoing fallibility of our death-sentencing laws,” said Henry Schwarzschild, director of the ACLU’s capital punishment project. “Judges, legislators and the American public are entitled to know about the unavoidable risk of executing the innocent.”
Radelet and Bedau, author of The Death Penalty in America, have spent the last three years examining convictions in capital crimes.
“I admit in many of these cases that had I sat on the jury, I would have found the guy guilty, also,” Radelet said yesterday. “Jurors, like the rest of us, are human beings. And human beings make mistakes.”
The Radelet-Bedau study –ts 343 convictions, all but 25 of which were later overturned – not because of legal technicalities, Radelet said, but because innocence was established.
Lawyers representing Death Row inmates already are preparing to use the study as a basis for defending their clients.
Michael Mello, an attorney with a newly created office in Tallahassee that represents Florida’s indigent Death Row population, said yesterday he intended to file an appeal next week, based on the study, on behalf of Joe Spaziano.
Gov. Bob Graham signed a death warrant last week for Spaziano, who was convicted of killing a Seminole County woman. He is scheduled to be executed Dec. 3.
“Up until Mike’s study, we suspected intuitively that there were a lot of miscarriages of justice,” Mello said. “But what we now have is documentation of that.”
But challenges of that documentation are likely.
Last year, James Adams was executed for the murder of a Florida rancher. Radelet and Bedau contend that Adams was innocent. His case is the only instance cited in the study of an innocent man being executed in the last 20 years.
Among evidence presented in the study was a statement from a witness who said he saw someone fleeing the rancher’s house and that person “was positively not Adams.” The study also indicates that hair found clutched in the victim’s hand did not match Adams’ hair.
“Much of this exculpatory information was not discovered until the case was examined by a skilled investigator the month before Adams’ execution. Governor Graham, however, refused to grant even a short stay to try to resolve these questions,” the study said.
Radelet said it was a difficult decision for him to include the Adams case in the study. He said he expected backlash from it, but “I really believe that James Adams was innocent.”
Art Wiedinger, assistant general counsel to Graham, said he was surprised that the Adams case was included in the report. He said Graham took extreme care in handling the case and reviewed the materials Radelet referred to.
“They did supply memorandum, I think, the week before the execution, and based on that review, the governor felt there was no basis to overturn the conviction,” Wiedinger said.
He said that not having read the study he had no opinion on whether it might alter popular opinion on the death penalty. But he said U.S. and Florida law require the exercise of extreme caution in capital cases. “Given all those safeguards, I think that meets all the problems.”
Ernest van den Haag, a Fordham University professor and one of the nation’s leading authors promoting the death penalty, said yesterday from his New York home that it should be no surprise to anyone that innocent people have been executed.
“Trucks do run over innocent people once in a while. We continue to drive trucks because we feel the advantages outweigh the costs,” he said. “I should say the same is true in justice. The advantages of having the death sentence outweigh the costs of making an occasional mistake.”
Van den Haag also said he did not expect the study to result in any policy changes – “none whatsoever, because anyone with common sense knows that mistakes will be made.”
Radelet said he hoped the study eventually would bring about the abolition of the death penalty. But he said he would be pleased if people “will remember that the possibility of convicting innocent people is very real.”
This report contains material from wire services.
Original Format
Newspaper
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Williams, Megan
Files
Citation
Romaner, Michael , “25 Innocent People Executed Since 1900, ACLU Study Claims,” HIST299, accessed March 12, 2026, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/94.