The clock has ticked down, the last-minute appeals have been exhausted, and the condemned’s time has
come. The convict is led into the death chamber, the witnesses are brought in, and the executioner
checks the machine. It’s time. The inmate is allowed their last words, and the executioner
presses the lever. The condemned is pronounced dead, and everyone at the prison breathes a sigh
of relief that justice was done. Someone paid the price for the terrible crime they committed.
Or did they? Does the death penalty always get it right? As the only penalty from which there’s
no reprieve once carried out, many people believe the risk is too high. After all,
someone who is wrongfully sent to prison can be released and given payments to try to make up for
the years they lost. When someone is wrongfully executed, there’s no way to make up for that.
That’s why the United States and many other countries with a death penalty
have lengthy appeals processes to allow time for evidence to come out.
Many times, it’s saved lives - over a hundred and fifty death row inmates have been exonerated.
But has an innocent person been executed? While many cases are still being debated, there are many
cases around the world where the executioner was forced to admit that they got the wrong criminal.
One of the first famous cases of wrongful executions happened in 1660 in Gloucester,
England. A successful man named William Harrison left his home to walk to a nearby village
and didn’t return home. One of his servants, John Parry, was sent after him - but when Harrison’s
son went out looking for him, he found only Parry. They soon found some of Harrison’s clothing,
slashed and covered in blood. No body was ever found, and as the investigation began,
John confessed that he and his mother and brother had killed Harrison for his money.
They denied everything, but John’s testimony was all that was needed.
The three servants were put on trial, pled guilty to lesser charges,
and were then found guilty of murder. The family was hung together on Broadway Hill.
There was just one problem with the open-and-shut case.
It was 1662 when William Harrison stepped off a ship arriving from Portugal. He had
a wild story of having been abducted and sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.
His master eventually died and he ran away, stowing away on a ship back to London.
This miraculous return came to be known as the Campden Wonder,
a miracle - for everyone except the unfortunate Parry family. But was Harrison’s story true?
Why did John Parry confess? Although historians have cast doubt on Harrison’s spectacular tale of
his whereabouts, this bizarre wrongful execution remains one of England’s biggest mysteries.
But it would not be England’s final wrongful execution.
The year was 1949, and the Cameo Theater in Liverpool was one of the city’s top entertainment
centers. That is, until it became the sight of a brutal crime. Cinema manager Leonard
Thomas and his deputy Bernard Caterall were counting the day’s earning when a masked man
stepped into their office. He robbed them, then fired and killed both men. As the staff arrived,
the killer made his escape down the fire escape. Two local men with a history of petty crime,
Charles Connolly and George Kelly, were quickly arrested. They claimed to have never met each
other and produced alibis, but they were charged nonetheless. Kelly, charged with
being the shooter, was eventually convicted after multiple trials and sentenced to death,
while Connolly pled guilty to lesser charges. He was executed in March 1950.
That was only the beginning of the strange turns in this case.
Many of the witnesses who named Kelly as the killer had their own criminal history,
and presiding Judge Cassels showed consistent bias throughout the trial for the prosecutions.
More troubling, the police questioned another local criminal, Donald Johnson,
and didn’t turn over the evidence to the proper authorities at trial. Johnson not
only knew more about the case than any of the men arrested but admitted to being around the
cinema at the time. He later confessed to lying to the police about the case but died in 1988
and his role in the shooting was never prosecuted. It wasn’t until 2003 when Kelly’s conviction was
overturned by the Court of Appeals, and he was given a proper burial as an innocent man.
The next case was bungled so badly, it led to the end of capital punishment in the United Kingdom.
Timothy Evans lived a quiet life in rural Wales with his wife and young daughter.
He had overcome illness as a child and worked as a painter despite chronic pain in his foot
and learning difficulties. He moved into an apartment building with his family in 1948,
but his marriage was full of fighting. Many neighbors reported screaming from
his apartment. So when his wife wound up dead under mysterious circumstances, he was suspect
#1. When he mentioned his wife had taken a drug to have an abortion, which was illegal,
that only made people more suite he was guilty. Then came the horrifying discovery of the body
of his baby daughter next to her. Evans was quickly put on trial, and with the testimony of
his neighbor John Christie, he was convicted. He was executed in March, 1950 by hanging.
But three years later, the case took a horrific turn.
When John Christie left his apartment and a new neighbor moved in,
multiple bodies were found hidden in a secret room of the house. It was revealed that
Christie was actually one of the worst serial killers in Welsh history, and the Evans family
were two more of his victims. Christie was soon executed for the murder of his own wife,
and with it, the Evans case attracted new attention. Although Christie had previous
convictions for assault, he was never seriously looked at as a suspect in the initial killings.
Evans was eventually pardoned in 1966, and the outrage over the execution of this simple,
troubled man led to capital punishment in Great Britain being abolished in 1965.
One thing many victims of wrongful execution have in common? They were victims of racism.
Mahmood Hussein Mattan was born in British Somaliland in 1923, and worked as a merchant
seaman until he settled in Wales. A man of Somali descent in Wales in the early 20th century wasn’t
going to blend in, and the negative attention Mahmood attracted only increased when he married
a local Welsh woman, Laura Williams. They endured harassment as an interracial couple
and eventually split up. But Mr. Mattan’s bad luck was only beginning. When a local business owner,
Lily Volpert, was robbed and murdered in her store in 1962, a massive manhunt
questioned all the men in the area. While they didn’t find any evidence in Mattan’s home,
a woman who had been at Volpert’s store later identified him as being in the
store right before the murder. Although she later contradicted her story, the prosecutors
later produced a twelve-year-old girl who claimed she had seen Mattan enter the shop.
The evidence was thin. That didn’t matter.
Mattan was quickly convicted despite there being no physical evidence linking him to the crime.
His own attorney’s closing speech was racist, claiming Mattan was a “semi-civilized savage”.
Mattan’s appeals failed, and he was executed less than two months after his conviction.
After his death, both another man seen near the shop and one of the witnesses were convicted of
violent crimes that resembled Volpert’s murder. While Mattan’s family attempted to appeal the
conviction posthumously, the government decided not to reopen the case. They did allow the
family to move the body to a Cardiff cemetery in 1996. His headstone reads “Killed by Injustice”,
and a later commission appointed by the government found his conviction was flawed. In 1998,
his family became the first family of a wrongfully executed person to receive a cash settlement.
Mateen was far from the only racial minority executed unjustly, as we head across the Atlantic.
The year was 1862, and the Dakota War was raging. In the middle of the United States Civil War,
another smaller war boiled over as Dakota natives fought with the United States government over
broken tariffs. Hundreds of Dakota soldiers were captured and tried by military tribunals for their
role in attacks on settlers. Ultimately, three hundred and three men were sentenced to death,
among them We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee. Also known as Chaska, he was known for abducting Sarah
Wakefield and her children, who he protected from attacks. Many rumors spread that he and
Sarah were lovers, but he was convicted for murdering a pregnant woman in a raid.
Hope was in the wings, as Abraham Lincoln was reportedly sympathetic to his case.
Lincoln was known for his liberal use of the commutation power, and he reversed all
but thirty-eight of the sentences for lack of evidence. Chaska was one of them...but he was
executed by General Henry Sibley anyway. Sibley claimed he had simply never received the pardon,
making Chaska’s execution a tragic mistake. Or was it? Many speculated that Chaska’s relationship
with Sarah Wakefield made him a target, and the General wanted to make an example. Today,
pressure from Native American activists for a posthumous pardon for Chaska continues to grow.
In the 1800s, executions in the American west were common. And it didn’t matter who you were.
Chipita Rodriguez wasn’t your typical convicted murderer. A Mexican-American woman who ran a
makeshift lodge for travelers, she was 63 when she had her brush with the law. A trader named
John Savage was found dead from ax wounds, and she was accused of killing and robbing
him. There was just one problem - the money she was accused of taking was found on his body.
She was indicted along with a man named Juan Silvera, who many suspected was secretly her son.
She refused to testify in her own defense, maybe to protect Juan,
and was convicted. The jury clearly had their doubts, as they recommended life
in prison. But Judge Benjamin Neal was a hard-nosed man, and he ordered her hung.
But her execution would not be the end of her story.
Rodriguez’s last words as she was executed were “No soy culpable”,
or “I am not guilty”. Her execution became part of American lore, as many in the area
claimed to see her ghost wandering the desert with a noose around her neck.
Books, newspapers, and operas have been written about her, casting her as a victim of racism
who may have been trying to protect her son. Although no formal review of the case
ever happened, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution condemning her execution in 1985.
No, there is no safety from wrongful convictions. Not for the elderly - and not for the young.
Joe Arridy was only twenty-one when the full force of the law came crashing down on him. His
parents were immigrants from Syria who came to America seeking work, and Joe was slow
as a young boy. He had trouble speaking and only attended one year of elementary school,
and wound up leaving a residential home for people with mental disabilities
and becoming a train-hopper. No one knows if he was in Pueblo, Colorado in August, 1936
when horror came to the Drain family. Two girls, Dorothy and Barbara, were viciously
attacked in their bedroom by an unknown assailant. Dorothy was sexually assaulted and died from her
injuries. When Arridy was arrested in neighboring Wyoming for vagrancy, Sheriff George Carrol was
determined to catch a bigger fish. He interrogated Arridy about the Drain case, and Joe confessed.
But did he even know what he was saying?
When Carroll called the Pueblo police chief, he learned that they had another suspect in custody,
Frank Aguilar. Aguilar confessed to the crime, having worked for the Drain family and been fired
before the attack. He said he never met Arridy - but that didn’t stop the authorities from charging
them both with the killings. The only piece of evidence they had against Arridy was his false
confession, and doctors said that Arridy only had the mind of a six-year-old. Both men were
sentenced to death, and Arridy’s attorney Gail Ireland fought for years to save Arridy’s life.
Those on Colorado’s death row stated that Arridy was the happiest prisoner, as he likely didn’t
even know what was about to happen to him. He played with a toy train until he was taken to the
gas chamber. While it was too late to save his life, he received a posthumous pardon in 2011.
Most wrongfully convicted people are bystanders or
unrelated to the crime. But the next may have been the victim.
By all accounts, Cameron Todd Willingham was a normal Texas dad. He and his wife Stacy raised
their three daughters - a toddler and twin babies in Corsicana. But one day, Stacy went out to shop
for Christmas presents, and things went terribly wrong. A massive blaze ripped through the home,
and only Cameron made it out. The three children tragically burned to death. When police looked
into the fire, they found evidence of arson, claiming that a liquid accelerant had been
used to start the blaze. They quickly charged Willingham with setting the fire to cover up
evidence of child abuse, but his wife denied that he had ever abused the girls or her.
That didn’t matter to prosecutors.
The state quickly assembled a bizarre array of witnesses. A jailhouse informant claimed
that Willingham had confessed while locked up awaiting trial. A psychiatrist nicknamed “Dr.
Death” for his testimony in death penalty cases argued that Willingham’s skull tattoo meant he
was a sociopath. Two local women claimed that they had urged Willingham to go back into the house to
rescue his kids, but he refused. Willingham was offered a plea deal for life in prison,
but refused, and was convicted. He maintained his innocence until his execution in 2004,
but the investigation continued after his death. Famous fire investigator Gerald Hurst
examined the evidence and found no compelling evidence of arson. Although Willingham’s wife
claimed years after his death that he confessed to her, many people now believe there may have
never been a crime at all, and Willingham was executed for a tragic house fire.
While it was too late for these eight individuals,
every wrongful conviction gains more attention to the possibility of people being executed unjustly.
The Innocence Project is one of many charities using DNA evidence to exonerate people before
their date with the executioner. Some have been released after decades on death row.
For more on the most shocking executions ever,
check out “50 Insane Execution and Death Penalty Facts That Will Shock You”,
and for how it’s evolved, watch “The Horrible History of the Death Penalty”.