Unrequited Innocence

Forty-three years after he was sentenced to death for murdering a North Carolina grocery clerk, Charles Ray Finch was released from prison in June when officials belatedly acknowledged his conviction was based on false forensic testimony and a dubious identification that followed a suggestive lineup.

Finch became the 166th defendant wrongly convicted and sentenced to death row since 1973, only to be later exonerated when evidence of their innocence emerged.

In their new study, Injustice Watch co-founder Rob Warden and reporter John Seasly have identified another troubling category of cases: Defendants sentenced to die who have not been exonerated despite significant evidence of their innocence. Some remain on death row. One, Larry Swearingen, was executed in Texas in August protesting his innocence to the end. Others have died in prison without new evidence being fully considered. Still others were removed from death row based on the evidence of innocence, but not fully exonerated.

Their research reviewing the 24 cases took more than a year and appears in the Spring 2019 issue of the Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy. The law review notes a series of potential policy changes that could limit the number of wrongful convictions, such as two ideas to reform juries: First, to end peremptory challenges, which have been used by prosecutors to eliminate black people from juries; and second, to have one jury decide guilt and a second decide on the sentence in capital cases -- permitting those opposed to the death penalty to weigh the evidence, but not the sentence.

Injustice Watch will be featuring the cases, adapted by Seasly from the law review, on our website throughout the fall. The first: The case of Larry Swearingen.