New Jersey's Death Penalty: INNOCENCE

Innocent Lives at Risk

• Since 1973, one hundred and twenty-two people have been exonerated and released from death row.(1)



• The problem of innocent people being sentenced to die is not isolated to just a few states, or to a particular period of time. Death row exonerations have occurred in twenty-five different states, with well over 50% occurring since 1993.



• According to an April 2005 survey by the Bloustein Center for Survey Research at Rutgers University, 94% of all New Jersyans beleive that innocent people are sometimes convicted of murder. More than 1/3 of death penalty supporters in New Jersey say they are less likely to support the death penalty after hearing that over 100 death row convictions have been overturned.(2)



• Nationally one person is exonerated for about every nine that are executed (119 exonerated and 970 executed as of May 25, 2005). Some of the factors leading to wrongful convictions include (1) eyewitness mistake; (2) inadequate representation; (3) perjury by witnesses; (4) prosecutorial misconduct; or (5) jurors that did not understand the process.



• The average length of imprisonment for those exonerated from death row is 9.3 years.



• Seventy-five of the 119 death row inmates that have been exonerated - or 63% - are minorities.



• Last year, a University of Michigan study found that death row inmates respresent one quarter of one percent of the prison population but 22% of the exonerated.(3)



• In modern day New Jersey, at least twenty-six innocent people have benn wrongfully convicted of serious crimes such as rape and murder and sentenced to long terms in prison. Importantly, most were not freed until years after their initial convictions.(4)



• In the most comprehensive state death penalty study in the nation, the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment recommended 85 reforms to the state's death penalty system to decrease the risk of wrongful executions. The committee noted that even if all 85 recommendations were implemented, they could not completely eliminate the risk. New Jersey's system fails to comply with a full 70% of the recommended protections.

DNA Cannot Solve the Problem

While DNA is an important new technology that has played a substantial factor in 14 of the 119 death row exonerations, most murders simply don't involve any biological evidence to be tested. Moreover, DNA testing is only as accurate as the human beings conducting the tests. Recent crime lab scandals in Oklahoma, Texas, Maryland, and Washington State have revealed that DNA and other forensic evidence can be misread, compromised, or even tainted.

Case study: The Story of Ray Krone

• Ray Krone was the 100^th death row inmate to be exonerated. He was released on April 8, 2002, after DNA evidence showed that he did not commit the murder for which he was convicted. Krone spent ten years of his life behind bars - three on death row - for a crime he did not commit. His story illustrates the inherent failure of the death penalty.



• Krone was convicted in 1992, based largely on circumstantial evidence and testimony that bite marks on the victim matched Krone's teeth. He was sentenced to death.



• Three years later he received a new trial but was again found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 1996.(5)



• Krone's post-conviction defense attorney, Alan Simpson obtained a court order for DNA tests. The result not only exculpated Krone, but they pointed to another man, Kenneth Phillips, as the assailant.



• In announcing that he would sek Krone's release from prison, Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley stated, "[Krone] deserves an apology from us, that's for sure. A mistake was made here. . . . What do you say to him? An injustice was done and we will try to do better. And we're sorry."