Whoops

Due to the fact that the criminal justice system is run by fallible humans, mistakes are made. In America's history of capital punishment, there have been several instances in which an innocent person was put on death row, and sometimes even executed, before the authorities would admit their mistake and exonerate the innocent individual. Since 1976, there have been 143 people exonerated from death row. These people were wrongly convicted due to mistaken eyewitness identification, false testimony, prosecutorial misconduct, unqualified defense lawyers, and false, coerced confessions, among other causes. The man on the top left, Randy Steidl, was lucky. He spent 12 years on Illinois' death row before he was finally exonerated*.

Troy Davis, bottom left, was not so lucky. He was executed in Georgia in 2011 for the killing of a cop in 1989, despite seven out of nine witnesses recanting their testimony, raising questions about his conviction before his execution**.