DP3 Analysis: More Than 10% of U.S. Exonerations in 2023 Involved Wrongful Use or Threat of the Death Penalty
The damage from threatening defendants and witnesses with the death penalty extended far beyond just wrongful capital convictions.
A Death Penalty Policy Project review of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has found that the pursuit or threatened use of the death penalty by police or prosecutors led to the wrongful murder convictions of at least seventeen innocent people who were exonerated in 2023. Those cases constituted more than 11% of the 153 exonerations recorded nationwide by the National Registry in 2023.
The damage from police or prosecutors threatening defendants or witnesses with the death penalty extended far beyond just wrongful capital convictions. While four of the exonerees had been sentenced to death, thirteen others received life sentences or terms of imprisonment ranging from 27 to 90 years.
As in years past, official misconduct was the leading cause of wrongful murder convictions, and misconduct was even more prevalent in cases in which authorities threatened defendants or witnesses with the death penalty. The National Registry reported that official misconduct was present in at least 118 exonerations in 2023, comprising 77.1% of all exonerations during the year. Misconduct contributed to wrongful convictions in 75 of the 88 homicide exonerations, or 85.2% of those cases. All seventeen wrongful murder convictions obtained with death penalty threats involved some form of major misconduct by police or prosecutors, and sixteen of those cases also involved perjury or false accusation by witnesses for the prosecution.
DP3’s analysis of the National Registry’s 2023 Annual Report on Exonerations found that the wrongful threat or pursuit of the death penalty was geographically diverse but concentrated largely in a handful of counties with long histories of abusive police and prosecutorial practices. Prosecutors in Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Pennsylvania wrongfully sought the death penalty against thirteen innocent capital defendants who were exonerated of murder in 2023. In four other cases, prosecutors in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania secured wrongful murder convictions against innocent non-capital defendants by presenting perjured testimony from witness who had been threatened with the death penalty or by obtaining a false confession after coercive interrogation that included suggestions that a sibling could face the death penalty.
Death threats also were implicated in two other Illinois wrongful murder convictions. In one case, prosecutors threatened a defense witness with the death penalty. In another case involving a sixteen-year-old girl who was not eligible for the death penalty, prosecutors used perjured testimony to wrongfully convict and sentence her co-defendant to death. Those two cases are included in the analysis below.
Here is a case-by-case breakdown of the 2023 exonerations that involving or implicating wrongful pursuit or threats of the death penalty (click the link above to enlarge the chart):
Color Key: Green [sentenced to death]; Blue [capitally prosecuted]; Salmon [defendant or witness threatened with death penalty]; Yellow [indirect direct penalty threats]. National Registry of Exonerations contributing factors codes: OM [Official Misconduct]; P/FA {Perjury/False Accusation]; F/MFE {False/Misleading Forensic Evidence]; MWID {Mistaken Witness Identification]; FC [False Confession]; ILD [Inadequate Legal Defense].
The correlation between a jurisdiction’s overuse of the death penalty and the unreliability of its resulting capital convictions and death sentences is well established. The 2023 exonerations provided additional evidence of one aspect of that relationship: the link between a county’s history of aggressive death penalty usage and systemic official misconduct.
Just five counties accounted for 15 of the 19 exonerations linked to wrongful threat or pursuit of the death penalty. Seven of the cases emanated from Cook County (Chicago), four from Philadelphia, two from Orleans Parish (New Orleans), and one each from Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) and Oklahoma County (Oklahoma City). Those counties also collectively account for 40 of the 190 death-row exonerations in cases tried in the U.S. since states resumed capital punishment after Furman v. Georgia struck down existing death penalty statutes in 1972. A DP3 review of 616 prosecutorial misconduct cases compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center found that misconduct by prosecutors in these counties had led to the reversals of 78 capital convictions or death sentences or the complete exoneration of wrongly convicted death row prisoners.
Four of the 2023 exonerees — John Huffington (MD), Jesse Johnson (OR), Noel Montalvo (PA), and Glynn Simmons (OK) — had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. Mr. Huffington was pardoned 42 years after his wrongful conviction and death sentence. Prosecutors dropped charges against Simmons, Montalvo, and Johnson when courts overturned their convictions 48, 20, and 19 years respectively after each was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death.
Nine other exonerees were wrongfully capitally prosecuted but not sentenced to death:
· Cook County prosecutors sought death against Francisco Benitez, Lee Harris, and Carl Reed. Benitez and Harris went to trial, were convicted, and were sentenced to life without parole and 90 years imprisonment, respectively. Prosecutors filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty against, leading him to falsely confess. They then dropped the death penalty and Reed was sentenced to a 27-year prison term.
· Philadelphia prosecutors wrongfully sought the death penalty against exonerees Kevin Bowman, Anthony Reid, and Gerald Howell. Bowman and Reid were convicted but sentenced to life without parole when their juries did not reach a unanimous sentencing verdict. Howell was acquitted of first-degree murder but convicted of second-degree murder (murder during the commission of a felony) and sentenced to life without parole.
· Orleans Parish prosecutors wrongfully sought the death penalty against Larry Moses and Darrill Henry. Moses was convicted of capital murder and barely avoided a death sentence when a single juror held out for a sentence of life without parole. Henry was convicted of capital murder and received a life-without-parole sentence.
· Like Jesse Johnson, Frank Gable was wrongfully capitally prosecuted in Marion County (Salem), Oregon. Gable was convicted but his jury rejected the death penalty and sentenced him to life without parole.
Bowman’s, Reid’s, and Moses’ cases illustrate the risk of wrongful executions in states that permit judges to impose the death penalty after capital sentencing juries do not unanimously agree on the appropriate sentence. While sentencing votes, at least in theory, should have no relationship to an individual’s guilt or innocence, studies have long shown that a juror’s residual doubt as to guilt is one of the most powerful circumstances supporting a vote for life. In the post-Furman era, three states — Florida, Alabama, and Delaware — have permitted judges to impose death sentences by overriding jury votes for life or based upon non-unanimous jury votes for death. Cases in which one or more jurors voted for life account for 30 of the 33 death-row exonerations in cases tried before capital sentencing juries in those states.
The 2023 exonerations also highlight some of the dangerous risks the death penalty imposes on the criminal justice system beyond the already significant prospect of executing innocent people. The misuse of the death penalty as a interrogation and plea bargaining tool coerces innocent people into confessing to crimes they didn’t commit to avoid the threat of execution. In addition, suspects — both innocent and guilty — who are threatened with the death penalty if they do not cooperate with law enforcement provide false testimony that sends innocent people to jail, often for decades.
Prosecutors used perjured testimony from witnesses who were threatened with the death penalty to wrongfully convict three of the 2023 non-capital exonerees of murder: David Ayala in Cook County, Michael Buehner in Cuyahoga County, and Edward Ramirez in Philadelphia. White and Ramirez were sentenced to life without parole. Buehner received a sentence of 18 years to life. David Wright, an illiterate seventeen-year-old who was likely intellectually disabled, falsely confessed after extensive coercive interrogation by Cook County detectives, who told him that his 18-year-old brother potentially faced the death penalty but that he would only receive a sentence of 10 to 25 years if he signed a statement detectives had prepared for him. Wright was nevertheless sentenced to life without parole.
Race — always a significant factor in who is exonerated from death row and how long an exoneration takes — had a pervasive presence in the 19 exonerations last year in which the wrongful use or threat of the death penalty was implicated. Sixteen of the exonerees (84.2%) were individuals of color: ten were Black (52.6%), six were Latinx (31.6%). Eleven of the 13 who were wrongfully capitally prosecuted were Black (9) or Latino (2). Three of the four who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die were defendants of color, two Black and one Latino.
The exonerees averaged 30.2 years between conviction and exoneration, collectively losing more than 570 years to the wrongful convictions.
DNA evidence, which historically has been a factor in only 15% of death-row exonerations, contributed to three of the four death-row exonerations in 2023 but was present in only one of the other exonerations involving wrongful death-penalty threats.
The Death Penalty Policy Project (“DP3”) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization housed within the Phillips Black Inc. public interest legal practice. DP3 provides information, analysis, and critical commentary on capital punishment and the role the death penalty plays in mass incarceration in the United States.