Death Row, "Exonerations", Media & Intentional Fraud
Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, CV at bottom
The modern era death row "exoneration" frauds appear to have been inspired by a study by well known anti death penalty activists Bedau and Radelet (1987), both of whom, also, happen to be academics. Cassell and Markman, rebutted their nonsense in 1988 (section 13).
The infamous deceptions, in the US, go as far back as Sacco and Vanzetti, from 1927 (section 11).
As a rule, the media parrots the anti death penalty "innocent"/"exoneration" frauds. They refuse to fact check/vet/research, as detailed.
It took me 5 minutes to discover this deception, in 1998/1999. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram published my op/ed on this in 2000, below.
Let's consider those who find fact checking/vetting to be important, actually do it and present the results.
1) New York Times: Death Row Innocent Claims 71% False (2005)
In 2005, New York Times reporter Adam Liptak found the death row innocence claims to be 71% false.
Liptak: "To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row,"
The Death of Innocents': A Reasonable Doubt, by Adam Liptak, NY Times, JAN. 23, 2005,
At the time of the article, there were 119 listed on the DPIC Innocence List. However, 22 of those were pre 1977 convictions, so, for the modern era, the number is 97, not 119, which correlates to 28 actual innocents, based upon Liptak's average error rate of 71%.
2) Florida Death Row Innocence Claims 83% False, Florida Commission on Capital Cases (2011)
The media parrots the false "exoneration" claims, even as they are aware of the report below, finding that, possibly, 4 out of the 23 "exonerations" may have proof of actual innocence.
Today (2019), the media, now, reports 29 "exoneration" frauds, based upon well known, false anti death penalty claims.
TRULY INNOCENT?: A Review of 23 Case Histories of Inmates Released from Florida‘s Death Row Since 1973, Commission on Capital Cases, The Florida Legislature, Roger R. Maas, Executive Director, May 13, 2011
3) How many DNA exonerations are guilty?
I have only fact checked/vetted one death row DNA exoneration case, just recently (4/2019).
What are the chances?
"Curtis Edward McCarty was exonerated in 2007 after serving 21 years – including 19 years on death row – for a 1982 Oklahoma City murder he didn’t commit." "He is the 15th person nationwide – and the third in Oklahoma – to be exonerated by DNA testing after serving time on death row."
As of 4/14/2019, neither the Innocence Project (IP) nor the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) noted the guilt findings of the court, which were known 8 years, previously . . .
What the court said in 2011 - now, 10 years ago.
"We conclude that despite the egregiousness of Gilchrist's alleged actions in this case, the State's theory of the case and the additional evidence against McCarty supported a reasonable belief in McCarty's guilt."
The evidence for guilt is substantial and detailed:
Which for IP and NRE means "exonerated".
Decision of the district court dismissing McCarty's claims is affirmed.
SHEPHERD, Circuit Judge.
McCARTY v. GILCHRIST , United States Court of Appeals,Tenth Circuit. Curtis Edward McCARTY, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Joyce A. GILCHRIST, in her official capacity; William Citty, Chief of Police, City of Oklahoma City, in his official capacity; City of Oklahoma City, Defendants—Appellees. No. 09–6220. Decided: July 14, 2011
downloaded 4/14/2019
What are the chances that I just happened to come upon the only DNA "exoneration" with substantial evidence of guilt? Close to zero, as confirmed by the examples of these additional massive deceptions.
4) Deception: The DPIC "Exonerated"/"Innocence" List
(see fact checking/vetting model-use it)
5) The Innocence Project Invents False Confessions
"Dr. Welner demonstrated how poor scientific methodology and an anti-police agenda among declared scholars in this novel area of scientific interest result in inflated perceptions of the prevalence of false confessions.
These include false representations by The Innocence Project that the proportion of false confessions in wrongful conviction cases is 25 percent when that percentage is in actuality close to 10 percent."
6) "Death penalty opponents have decided that, if a large enough risk of mistaken executions does not exist, they will invent it." (2002)
reports By United States Congress, Senate, 107th Congress, 2d Session, Calender no 731, Report 107-315. The Innocence Protection Act of 2002, (iv) The innocence tactic: Unreliable studies and disinformation", p 65-69 http://alturl.com/6j7oc
7) "By deflating the DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center's Innocence) List, Justice Scalia’s concurring opinion in Kansas v. Marsh contributes to an honest and realistic assessment of that actual risk." "The more conservative approach of the court in Quinones I only recognized “actual innocence” in one‑half of one percent (0.5%) of the 7,084 death sentences imposed between 1973 and 2001." (2008)
"Exoneration Inflation: Justice Scalia’s Concurrence in Kansas v. March", by Ward Campbell, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, California Department of Justice, p 49, The Journal of the Institute for the Advancement of Criminal Justice, Issue 2, Summer 2008
8) For all violent crimes, the actual exoneration/ no connection to the crime rate is in the range of 0.016%–0.062%.
A reasonable (and possibly overstated) calculation of the wrongful conviction rate appears, tentatively, to be somewhere in the 0.016%–0.062% range that comfortably embraces Justice Scalia’s often criticized figure. Based on a careful review of the available empirical literature, it is possible to assemble the component parts of a wrongful conviction rate calculation by looking at error rates at trial, the ratio of wrongful convictions obtained through trials versus plea bargains, and the percentage of cases resolved through pleas. Combining empirically based estimates for each of these three factors results in that 0.016%–0.062% range.
Overstating America's Wrongful Conviction Rate? Reassessing the Conventional Wisdom About the Prevalence of Wrongful Convictions (2018), Cassell, Paul G., 60 Ariz. L. Rev. 815 (2018); University of Utah College of Law Research Paper No. 291. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3276185 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3276185
9) "Having largely abandoned the moral arguments against capital punishment, the modern abolition movement is now based on a trio of urban legends: (1) the death penalty is racist at its core; (2) those accused of capital murder get grossly inadequate representation; and (3) a remarkable number of people on death row are innocent." (2005)
"The Myth Of Innocence", Joshua Marquis, published in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology - 3/31/2005, Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois
10) Anti Death Penalty Folks Decided to Redefine both "Innocent" and "Exonerated", as if they had redefined lie as truth. (2010)
The “Innocent”, the “Exonerated” and Death Row
11) The 4.1% Innocent: 77% False (2015)
The 4.1% "Innocent" on Death Row: More Nonsense
12) 71-83% "Error" Rate in Death Row Innocent Claims (1920s - 2019)
The Innocent Frauds: Standard Anti Death Penalty Strategy
READ SECTIONS 3&4 FIRST
13) "Americans should be far more worried about the wrongfully freed than the wrongfully convicted.",
The Innocent and the Shammed, by Joshua Marquis, New York Times, 1/26/2006
Sharp: So true, . . . but, only, if harm to innocents, actually, matters, to you.
For example, when have anti death penalty folks opposed early release of criminals, which causes countless numbers of murders, rapes and robberies of innocents?
What other government overseen practices, which cause many more deaths and injuries, have you called upon to be ended? Think about it. The anti death penalty movement is about saving the life of murderers. Nothing more (see 14, below)
Let's review:
Since 1973:
about 21,000 additional innocents have been murdered by those KNOWN murderers that we have allowed to murder, again - recidivist murderers.
about 440,000 additional innocents have been murdered by those KNOWN criminals that we have allowed to harm, again - recidivist criminals.
The numbers for additional rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults are much, much higher, as, everyone, knows.
Think of how much worse things are, now (2020 forward), for the innocents harmed, with, near, immediate release, with no cash bail, for murderers, rapist, robbers, etc., and the "defund the police" idiocy.
See the recent recidivism rate studies, by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), reviewing the 3, 5 and 9 year criminal recidivism rates, after prison release, finding from 65-80% recidivism for known criminals released, who were caught . . . with the understanding that
1) only 25% of crimes are solved and that
2) huge numbers of known criminals are not locked up, prior to re offending, making recidivism rates much higher than what we know. As any given time, those criminals released on parole or probation are twice the number of those incarcerated.
As recently as 1915, we may have proof of innocents executed, two brothers in South Carolina.
MEDIA
And on which of those "innocents at risk" issues do you think the media concentrates? . .
Google search results from 6/5/2019, under "news"
a) innocent "death row" 118,000
b) recidivism murder 18,700
. . . even though the innocents murdered, by recidivist murderers and recidivist criminals, is a vast multiple, hundreds of thousands of times more realized than innocents executed. (14)
So, what criminal justice program are folks clamoring to shut down?
13) 50%, 60% and 100% Errors In Innocent Claims - 1987
The modern era death penalty frauds appear, directly, related to this academic study, from 1987.
In reviewing the DPIC’s original 1993 study, finding 48 (of the 69) "innocent" defendants on death row, the DPIC states its debt for the " . . . ground breaking work done by . . . Professors Michael Radelet and Hugo Bedau"(p 1) in their
"Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases", a study which
"consistently presented incomplete and misleading accounts of the evidence." (from citation, below)
Making it the perfect antecedent for the future frauds to follow.
The study concluded that 23 innocent persons had been executed since 1900.
However, the study's methodology was so flawed that at least 12 of those cases had no evidence of innocence and substantial evidence of guilt. The remaining 11 cases represent 0.14% of the 7,800 executions which have taken place since 1900 and . . . . , there is, in fact, no proof that those 11 executed were innocent . . .
and 211 of the studies 350 cases, or 60%, were not sentenced to death. Bedau and Radelet already knew that plea bargains, the juries, the evidence, the prosecutors, judicial review and/or the legal statutes had put these crimes in the "no capital punishment" category.
Had a high school student presented such a report, where 50%, 60% and 100% of the material was either false or misleading, a grade of F would be required, just like the deceptions today.
Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Markman: "This study - the most thorough and painstaking analysis ever on the subject - fails to prove that a single such mistake (an innocent executed) has occurred in the United States during the twentieth century. 'Presumably, Bedau and Radelet would have selected the most compelling 23 cases of the innocent executed to prove their proposition.' "Yet, in each of these cases, where there is a record to review, there are eyewitnesses, confessions, physical evidence and circumstantial evidence in support of the defendant’s guilt. Bedau has written elsewhere that it is ‘false sentimentality to argue that the death penalty ought to be abolished because of the abstract possibility that an innocent person might be executed when the record fails to disclose that such cases exist.’ . . . (T)he Bedau and Radelet study . . . speaks eloquently about the extraordinary rarity of error in capital punishment." ("Innocents on Death Row?", National Review, September 12, 1994).
Bedau and Radelet: The perfect foundation for the frauds that followed.
Protecting the Innocent: A Response to the Bedau-Radelet Study, Stephen J. Markman and Paul G. Cassell, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Nov., 1988), pp. 121-160, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1228837?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3Ac79d054cbac4036be4e5ac459fe3b4cb&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Then these:
14) The Death Penalty: Saving More Innocent Lives
15) Deterrence, Death Penalties & Executions
16) "Opponents in capital punishment have blood on their hands", Dennis Prager, 11/29/05,
17) "A Death Penalty Red Herring: The Inanity and Hypocrisy of Perfection", Lester Jackson Ph.D.
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3300+ pro death penalty quotes, from some of the greatest thinkers in history, inclusive of 600+ quotes from victim's families
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Partial CV, Dudley Sharp
