Mistaken Identity? 10 Contested Death Penalty Cases

A gurney used for lethal injections in Florida.

(Image credit: Florida Department of Corrections)

A death penalty case long surrounded by questions has been brought to the surface again, with a new report suggesting that the 1989 execution of Carlos DeLuna killed an innocent man. DeLuna's is not the first case to raise such red flags.

DeLuna was convicted of the 1983 stabbing of Wanda Lopez, a convenience store worker in Corpus Christi, Tex. He maintained his innocence while insisting the real killer was Carlos Hernandez, a man who looked much like DeLuna.

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Sacco and Vanzetti were followers of Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, and anti-Italian sentiment almost certainly played a role in their execution, said Michael Radelet, a sociologist at the University of Colorado who specializes in death penalty issues. The accused men waged a then-unprecedented six-year legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court twice, and public figures (Albert Einstein among them) called for new trials. But even a confession to the murders by another man, ex-convict Celestino Madeiros, could not save Sacco and Vanzetti's lives. They died in the electric chair on Aug. 23, 1927. Later, several anarchist leaders spoke out to say that Sacco was guilty but Venzetti was not, though historians still debate whether either man really pulled the trigger.

Based on the judgment of all-white juries, eight black teenage boys were sentenced to death for the rape of two white women on a freight train in 1931 (a ninth boy, only 12, was judged too young for the electric chair). The trials took place in just a day — with a lynch mob demanding the surrender of the teenagers outside the jail before the trials — and the only lawyers who would defend the accused included a retiree who hadn't tried a case in years and a Tennessee real estate lawyer unfamiliar with Alabama law.

The convictions led to demonstrations in the heavily black neighborhood of Harlem in New York City, and the case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, where the convictions were reversed because of the lack of an adequate defense. Amid enormous public interest, charges were dropped against four of the men. Three were re-sentenced to life in prison; a fourth, Clarence Norris, was re-sentenced to death, later reduced to life in prison. Gov. George Wallace pardoned Norris in 1976. To this day, the Scottsboro case is still shorthand in public dialogue for unfair, racially biased convictions and sentencing.

The crime of the century led to the trial of the century, with Hauptmann maintaining his innocence to the end. Later analyses would call into question much of the evidence that sent Hauptmann to his death, including eyewitness accounts and a lack of Hauptmann's fingerprints at the scene. Books have been written both supporting the 1932 verdict and refuting it, and Hauptmann's widow fought until her death in 1994 to have her dead husband's conviction overturned.

The first woman to die by lethal injection in the state of Virginia, Teresa Lewis was convicted of paying to have her husband and stepson murdered in 2002. Her case drew outcry, because testing had pegged Lewis' IQ at 72, just two points above that classified as intellectually disabled. Lewis' attorneys advised her to plead guilty in hopes of leniency, but she instead received the death penalty. The two hitmen who killed her husband and stepson received life sentences.

The controversy around Humberto Leal's death was not focused on his guilt, but on his legal rights. Leal, a Mexican citizen, was convicted of the 1994 rape, kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda, whose body was found bludgeoned on a dirt road in San Antonio, Texas. But police had not informed Leal of his right to call the Mexican consulate upon his arrest, putting the case on shaky grounds.

In a rare move on Sept. 15, 2011, the Supreme Court halted the execution of Texas death row inmate Duane Buck. The stay was a surprise, because the Supreme Court rarely jumps in on death penalty cases unless there is doubt about the defendant's innocence; in this case, the Supreme Court stepped in because of testimony of a psychologist who said black criminals were more likely to commit violence in the future than criminals of other races. (Buck was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her friend in 1995.)

All the cases but Buck's were, and all five of those defendants were re-sentenced to death. The Supreme Court will now decide whether to hear Buck's case. If it doesn't, Buck will have to again appeal to Texas' Board of Pardon and Paroles, which has once before refused to commute his sentence to life in prison. If the board again turns down Buck's request, only Texas Gov. Rick Perry could halt Buck's execution.

Of the 243 people put to death during the tenure of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the case of Cameron Todd Willingham might be the most controversial. Willingham was convicted and executed for the deaths of his three young daughters, who died in a fire at the family's home. Prosecutors alleged that Willingham set the fire and killed the girls to cover up abuse; Willingham's wife, who was not home at the time of the blaze, denied at the time that he abused his children.

The crux of Willingham's case, however, revolved around whether the fire was set on purpose. Central to Willingham's conviction was an analysis by deputy fire marshal Manuel Vasquez concluding that lighter fluid or some other accelerant had been spread throughout the hallways of the home. But in 2004, a second fire investigator, Gerald Hurst, found multiple scientific errors in Vasquez's report and concluded there was no evidence of arson. A 2009 report by the Texas Forensic Science Commission would later come to the same conclusion.

But that wasn't the end of the Willingham case: In 2009, the case became intertwined with politics after Perry replaced three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission two days before a meeting on the report, leading critics to accuse the governor of trying to hush up talk of Willingham's potential innocence. When the commission released its report in April 2011, it took no stance on Willingham's guilt or innocence. [10 Political Protests That Change the World]

No matter the strength of the evidence, an admission of fault is unlikely, UC Boulder's Radelet said. There have only been a handful of post-mortem pardons in the U.S., one in 1891 in Illinois and one in January 2011, when then-Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter pardoned a disabled man executed in 1939, Radelet said. With politics at play, he said, there is little motive to look deeply at the Willingham case.

Davis' case became a national and international flashpoint because of concerns about witness testimony. Seven of nine eyewitnesses who implicated Davis in the shooting have recanted their testimony, and others say that the man who originally implicated Davis was actually the killer. Public figures as diverse as death penalty opponent former President Jimmy Carter and conservative U.S. representative Bob Barr of Georgia called for reconsideration of Davis' sentence, but on Sept. 20, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to grant him clemency.

Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.