To the editors:
In his interesting article “Capital Blunder” (Reader 7/28) Donald Sevener cites an “extensive” study of capital cases by Professor Michael L. Radelet. Mr. Sevener tells us that Prof. Radelet concluded that an innocent person was convicted in 350 of these cases. This figure would be more meaningful if Mr. Sevener had specified the total number of cases Prof. Radelet studied. Can you or he give us that information?
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Mr. Cutler raises a question that professors Michael L. Radelet of the University of Florida and Hugo A. Bedau of Tufts University do not answer, largely because the purpose of their research was not to determine the proportion of death-penalty cases in which erroneous convictions occurred, but to document as many instances of “miscarriages of justice,” as their article in the Stanford Law Review was entitled, as they could find. They found 350, though they stress that their study most likely did not uncover the universe of wrongful convictions.
Of the 350 defendants, 315 were released from prison after the truth was discovered–187 spent less than five years in prison, 65 spent between six and ten years incarcerated. Eight died while serving prison terms, and 24 were executed, none in Illinois. There were 22 “close calls” in which death sentences were almost carried out on innocent defendants, including one who was spared at the gallows, one who was strapped in the electric chair, and one who had his head shaved in preparation for electrocution.
