News and Updates

Credit: Austin American Statesman

Sandra and Rodrick Reed

Eight retired federal and state judges on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to accept an appeal by Rodney Reed, who faces a January execution ithe 1996 rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites in Bastrop County.

Credit: Handout/Reuters

The death chamber is seen through the steel bars from the viewing room at the federal penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas

 A bipartisan panel led by a Republican and a Democrat, who together oversaw more than 50 executions, called today for an end to the lethal drug cocktail that was used in the botched execution in Oklahoma.

Credit: Jerry Cabluck—Sygma/Corbis

Walls Unit in Huntsville prison where lethal injections are carried out on inmates in Huntsville, Texas.

New research finds that almost four percent of U.S. capital punishment sentences are wrongful convictions, almost double the number of people set free, meaning around 120 of the roughly 3,000 inmates on death row in America are not guilty.

The United States may be putting more innocent people to death than previously thought. According to a sweeping new statistical analysis made public today, the rate of wrongful death sentences in the U.S. is probably much higher than experts have estimated.

Authors of the study say that their “conservative estimate of the proportion of erroneous convictions” is 4.1 percent, or approximately twice the number actually exonerated and set free from death row. This could mean that approximately 120 of the roughly 3,000 inmates on death row in America might not be guilty, while additional scores of wrongfully convicted inmates are serving life in prison after their death sentences were reduced over technical legal errors.

Texas death row inmate Ray Jasper is scheduled to be put to death on March 19. He has written us a letter that, he acknowledges, "could be my final statement on earth." It is well worth your time.