At the time of the fourth stay of Richard Glossip's execution, it seems appropriate to ask, what are the most controversial executions in U.S. history? Controversial executions make up a large number of death penalty cases in the United States. With the responsibility of taking a life, even the live of a convicted killer, comes the burden to make sure the guilt is beyond a reasonable doubt. Not only that, but US executions must be done in a manner consistent with the Bill of Rights and established case law. They can't be cruel, done in an unusual manner, or done to minors or those with diminished mental capacity.
Unfortunately, these rules have been broken quite often in death penalty cases. Especially in the early 20th century, minority suspects were often given incompetent defenses, with trials presided over by hostile judges and juries. Children have been executed, along with suspects whose mental capacity left them unfit to stand trial. And many people have gone to their deaths proclaiming their innocence - only to be proven right decades later.
Here are some of the most controversial executions and death penalty cases in US history.
http://www.ranker.com/list/controversial-us-death-penalty-executions-093015/mike-rothschild, death, all people, people, crime, controversial,
Cameron Todd Willingham
Willingham was convicted of murdering his three daughters in a house fire in Texas in 1991. He refused to plead guilty at his trial, even though this would spare him from the death penalty. Almost as soon as he was arrested, skepticism emerged about whether the fire was caused deliberately. Willingham's defense was also hampered by unreliable witnesses, and prosecutors were never able to establish a clear motive for the arson.
After Willingham's conviction, fire inspector Gerald Hurst engaged a thorough review of the case and concluded there wasn't enough evidence to conclude arson. Hurst's report was sent to Texas governor Rick Perry, who ignored it, and Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004.
After his death, additional reports concluded that the evidence for arson was unconvincing, and if the jury had been given key exonerating information, Willingham would have been acquitted. In 2009, a formal review of the case was carried out by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, who found that the declaration of arson was unfounded.
Caryl Chessman
Chessman became a key figure in anti-death-penalty sentiment in the 1950s, after being convicted of robbery, kidnapping and rape in 1948. The jury determined that Chessman, who had become known as the "Red Light Bandit," had caused bodily harm during one of the kidnappings, making him eligible for death - despite none of his victims actually dying.
From death row, Chessman wrote books maintaining his innocence and insisting that his original confession had been coerced through torture. His trial became a media circus, with Chessman defending himself, and a botched transcript that was noticeably edited after the death of the court stenographer. There was widespread outrage over the case, and Chessman had numerous public figures clamoring for a new trial, including former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, writer Ray Bradbury and poet Robert Frost.
On May 2, 1960, Chessman finally went to the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison - just as a legal secretary called with news that a federal judge had issued one more stay of execution. But by the time the news reached prison officials, Chessman was dead.
George Stinney
Despite an almost complete lack of evidence, Stinney was found guilty for the rape and murder of two pre-teen girls in 1944. The only evidence against Stinney at all was that he'd spoken with the two girls at some point before their murder. An all-white jury deliberated for ten minutes, after a trial that took just a day. At 14, Stinney was the youngest person executed in the US in the 20th century - with less than three months passing between the murders and his execution.
In 2013, a local historian who had been looking into the case persuaded a South Carolina circuit court to reopen the case. Stinney was given a new trial and exonerated, because the boy had a defense attorney who took no action on his behalf, and had been beaten into confessing.
Johnny Garrett
Garrett was executed by lethal injection in Texas in 1992 for the stabbing and rape of Sister Tadea Benz, a 76 year old Roman Catholic nun. Garrett was mentally disabled and suffered from multiple personalities, a result of childhood sexual abuse. He was also 17 at the time of his arrest, and had not signed the confession he claimed he was coerced into making. He was also linked to a second rape and murder of an elderly woman, Narnie Bryson, though he was never charged. After a trial with an uninspired defense and forensic evidence that should have been thrown out, Garret was quickly found guilty.
Years after Garrett's execution, Amarillo police connected another man, Leoncio Perez Rueda, to the Bryson murder, matching his DNA with that on a bed sheet from the crime scene. It's still not clear what, if anything Garrett had to do with the first murder.
Kelsey Patterson
Patterson was convicted of shooting Louis Oates, 63 and Dorothy Harris, 41, at their workplace in Palestine, Texas. Patterson shot Oates in the back of the head, left, then came back to kill Harris when he heard her screams at discovering Oates’s body.
Patterson had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia after two other non-fatal shootings, and had been deemed unfit to stand trial. After the murders of Oates and Harris, Patterson was again analyzed, and again found to be suffering from schizophrenia - specifically, the delusion that he was being controlled by aliens. Despite this Patterson still stood trial, was convicted and sentenced to death.
The Texas board of Pardons and Paroles advised that Patterson’s sentence be reduced from death to life imprisonment on the grounds of mental illness. But Texas governor Rick Perry overruled them because at the time, Texas didn't have a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, and Patterson was executed in May 2004.
Sacco and Vanzetti
Italian immigrants Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in 1927 after a highly contested series of trials over the shooting death of a security guard and paymaster during a 1920 armed robbery.
The trials are now seen to be highly flawed, featuring a poor defense, conflicting witnesses speaking in thick Italian accents, and evidence of the jury tampering with evidence. The men were followers of Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, and anti-Italian sentiment almost certainly played a role in their execution.
After their convictions, the accused men waged a six-year legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court twice, with numerous public figures calling for new trials. Another man even confessed to the shootings, ex-convict Celestino Madeiros, but the die was cast, and the two men died in the electric chair on August 23, 1927. Historians still debate whether either man really pulled the trigger.
Teresa Lewis
Lewis was found guilty of the murder of her husband and stepson in October 2002, as part of a scam to cash in on their life insurance. She had hired two young men and gave them money to buy the guns they used to shoot the victims. The men broke into their home and shot the husband and stepson, after which Lewis waited almost an hour to call the police - but not before robbing her dead husband.
Humberto Leal Garcia
Leal was convicted of the rape, kidnap, torture and murder of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda in 1994. Leal was a Mexican citizen but was not informed of his right to contact the Mexican consulate. Prosecutors alleged that Leal incriminated himself and never told police he was a Mexican national. It was soon found that Leal was not the only Mexican inmate in an American prison or on death row to have been denied this right - a lack of due process that became an international controversy.
The International Criminal Court in the Hague ruled that these inmates, about 50 in all, had been denied their rights under the Vienna Convention, meaning their cases had to be reviewed. The Supreme Court said that the decision by the international court was binding, but without a law obliging states to abide by the decision, it had no legal standing.
As Leal’s execution date approached, President Obama asked the Supreme Court to award clemency in order to reserve America’s standing on the world stage. The Supreme Court denied the petition, and Leal was executed by lethal injection on July 7, 2011.
Napolean Beazley
Beazley shot and killed 63-year-old businessman John Luttig in Texas on April 19, 1994, in an attempt to steal Luttig's Mercedes. He also fired on Luttig’s wife but she survived the attack by playing dead. Beazley was 17 years, eight and one-half months old at the time of the offense.
Along with two accomplices, Beazley was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. But before his execution date, the Supreme Court began reviewing the law around sentencing juveniles to death. They also reviewed Beazley's case, though three of the nine justices recused themselves because the victim's father was a judge that they had worked with. The review came too late for Beazley, who was executed on May 28, 2002.
A few years later, the Supreme Court ruled that the execution of juveniles was cruel and unusual punishment and therefore illegal under the United States Constitution - meaning Beazley was one of the last juveniles to be executed in the US.
The Scottsboro Boys
Even 80 years later, the phrase "Scottsboro Boys" is shorthand for racially based death sentencing.
Based on the judgment of all-white juries, nine black teenage boys were found guilty of raping two white women on a freight train in 1931. Eight were sentenced to death, with the final one being just 12 years old and deemed too young for the electric chair. The proceedings were a farce from the beginning, with all nine trials being handled in just one day, a group of defense attorneys totally unsuited to criminal defense, and a lynch mob demanding the surrender of the teenagers outside the court.
The convictions led to demonstrations around the country, and the case eventually made it to the Supreme Court. The convictions were reversed because of the lack of an adequate defense, with charges beingdropped against four of the men. After numerous appeals, retrials, and reversals, none of the men were executed, though many served long prison terms - all based on conflicting evidence.