Two hundredth death row exoneration shows US capital punishment is ‘broken’

The US has seen the 200th individual on death row exonerated since 1973.

The exoneration earlier this week has led to further calls from a Catholic organisation that advocates against the death penalty for an end to the “broken system of capital punishment” to ensure innocent people aren’t executed in the future.

“Because of the tireless efforts of faithful advocates and committed lawyers, 200 people have now been saved from the threat of execution after being sentenced to death,” Krisanne Valliancourt Murphy, the executive director of Catholic Mobilising Network, said in a 3 July statement.

“And while we praise God that these lives have been spared, we also remember the many individuals – both innocent and guilty – who did not, and will not receive the same grace, whose lives are discarded by a system determined to throw them away,” Valliancourt Murphy continued.

Larry Roberts was exonerated on 1 July after he was wrongfully convicted in the 1983 murder of a fellow prisoner and a prison guard at the California Medical Center in Vacaville, California. After 41 years, the California Attorney General’s office has has said it will not retry him after a US district judge granted Roberts a new trial, meaning he is in effect cleared of all charges and an innocent man.

Roberts’ exoneration is the third of 2024.

Kerry Max Cook was exonerated in June for the 1977 murder of Linda Jo Edwards, who was found dead in her apartment in Tyler, Texas. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared Cook innocent of the crime for which he has spent nearly 20 years on death row.

In February, meanwhile, Daniel Gwynn had charges of first-degree murder, arson and aggravated assault that resulted in a death sentence dismissed. His sentence was related to the 1994 death of Marsha Smith, who was killed in a fire in west Philadelphia.

The tracking of exonerations dates back to 1973 because that was the year after the Supreme Court’s Furman v. Georgia ruling, which ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional when it is imposed in an arbitrary and capricious manner that leads to discriminatory results.

The 200 exonerations that have taken place since are across 30 states. Florida has the most exonerations of any state with 30, followed by Illinois with 22 and Texas with 18. Six other states – Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Arizona – have had more than 10 exonerations.

Valliancourt Murphy argues the number of exonerations shows just how flawed the system is.

“The only way to ensure that we do not execute innocent people is to end the irreparably broken system of capital punishment in our country,” Valliancourt Murphy said.

There are currently 2,244 prisoners on death row in the United States. California has the highest number of those, with 641, though California Gov. Gavin Newsom has had a moratorium on the death penalty in place since 2019. The other states with the highest number of death row inmates are Florida and Texas, with 294 and 181, respectively.

“As Catholics, we know that every person is sacred, endowed with an inherent dignity that can never be lost, regardless of the harm one may have suffered or caused,” Valliancourt Murphy said. “It’s time to end the death penalty, once and for all.”

Photo: Death row inmate Hank Skinner speaks to a member of the prison administration at the Allan B. Polunsky prison, Livingston, Texas, 25 May 2022. Accused of a triple homicide, Skinner was on death row in Texas for nearly three decades, during all of which he maintained his innocence. Facing an execution date for the fourth time, he died on 16 February 2023 after complications from a brain tumour. (Photo by CECILE CLOCHERET/AFP via Getty Images.)

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