THE DEATH OF INNOCENTS An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions

Hardback. Dobie Gillis Williams, an indigent black man from rural Louisiana with an IQ of 65, was accused of a brutal rape and murder. Williams's inept defence counsel, later disbarred for unethical practice in unrelated cases, allowed the prosecution's incredibly contrived scenario of the crime to go essentially unchallenged. Less than 2yrs. after Williams's execution in January 1999, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to kill a man so mentally disabled. In 1986, Joseph Roger O'Dell was convicted of murder in Virginia despite highly circumstantial evidence from a jailhouse snitch. For 12yrs, O'Dell sought DNA testing on the forensic evidence, which he claimed would exonerate him, but the courts refused. After his execution on July 23, 1997, the state destroyed the evidence. As a result, its conviction of O'Dell could never be scrutinised. "The reader of this book will be the first 'jury' with access to all the evidence the trial juries never saw," says Prejean, who accompanied both men to their executions. By using the withheld evidence to reconstruct the crimes for which these 2 men were convicted, the author shows how race, prosecutorial ambition, poverty, election cycles, and publicity play far too great a role in determining who dies and who lives. She traces the historical underpinnings of executions in the US, demonstrating that it is no accident that over 80% of executions in the previous 25yrs. have been carried out in the former slave states. She also raises profound constitutional questions about an appeals system that decides most death cases on procedural grounds without ever examining their merits. Up to the time of the book's publication, well over 100 wrongful convicted persons have been freed from death row. If constitutional protections - due process, assistance of counsel, and equal justice under the law - are truly being respected, how is it possible that these people were convicted in the first place? And how can anyone accept a system so rife with error? With Author's Notes on Resources, Notes + Index. 310pp. 8vo. h/back. With tiny label to fpd o/w F. in F. dw.