These are thirteen people executed for crimes they may not have or did not commit.
It’s impossible to hear their tragic stories and not long for justice on their behalf.
13.
Cameron Todd Willingham
Two days before Christmas in 1991, the Willingham family home in Texas burned down.
Stacey Willingham, the matriarch of the family, was out doing some last-minute Christmas shopping.
Cameron Willingham was at home with his three daughters - Amber Louise Kuykendall, aged
two, and the twins Karmon Diane Willingham and Kameron Marie Willingham, both aged one.
Cameron was able to escape the blaze with minor burns, but his daughters, tragically,
were not so lucky.
All three died in the fire.
If this wasn’t horrific enough for Cameron and Stacey, Cameron was charged with capital
murder of his own three daughters, after Texas arson investigators claimed that the fire
was an intentional murder plot.
What followed was a sham of a trial, where things like Cameron owning Iron Maiden posters
and having a tattoo of a skull and snake were brought in to suggest he may have been a cold-blooded
killer.
Sadly, this was apparently enough.
Despite pleading innocence all the way up to 2004, his execution still went ahead.
Later, more reliable arson experts claimed that the science behind Cameron’s conviction
was bunk.
In the words of Former Louisiana State University fire instructor Kendall Ryland, “[It] made
me sick to think this guy was executed based on this investigation…
They executed this guy and they’ve just got no idea - at least not scientifically
- if he set the fire, or if the fire was even intentionally set.”
12.
David Wayne Spence
We remain in Texas - one of the United States’ most enthusiastic executors - for the death
of David Wayne Spence, who was executed in 1997.
The crime he was accused of was undeniably horrific - a triple sexual assault and murder
case from 1982, where three teenagers were found dead next to Lake Waco.
All evidence pointed to the deaths being a case of mistaken identity - three other people
were supposed to have been murdered in a supposed life insurance scam.
Investigators believed that career criminal David Wayne Spence had been hired to carry
out this hit.
Well, one overzealous narcotics cop believed he was responsible.
The lead detective on the case was quoted saying, “Nothing from the investigation
ever led us to any evidence that he was involved.”
The Waco police lieutenant also said, “My opinion is that David Spence was innocent.
Nothing from the investigation ever led us to any evidence that he was involved.”
But he was sentenced to death anyway, partially on the testimony of prison inmates who later
admitted that they’d been bribed to give their testimony.
Shortly before his execution, Spence said to the families of the 1982 murder victims,
“I want you to understand I speak the truth when I say I didn’t kill your kids.
Honestly, I have not killed anyone.
I wish you could get the rage from your hearts and you could see the truth and get rid of
the hatred.”
11.
Timothy Evans
Now over to England.
While the death penalty was abolished there in 1965, they got plenty of wrongful executions
under their belt before the cutoff.
One such execution was the death of Timothy Evans in 1950.
He tearfully confessed to the accidental killing of his wife during a botched abortion and
accepted the grim consequences.
Timothy wasn’t in possession of his full mental faculties and was easily persuaded
during his three-day trial.
He was charged with double murder, for his wife and unborn child, before being hanged
at Pentonville Prison.
But, sickeningly, Timothy Evans wasn’t a murderer at all.
He’d been taken advantage of by an intelligent and malicious serial killer who happened to
board with him, ex-policeman John Reginald Christie, who would later be convicted of
the murders of six people.
In light of new evidence, Timothy Evans was given a posthumous pardon nearly two decades
later.
In a sense, he was just as much a victim of the terrifying John Reginald Christie as any
of the others that died more directly by his hand.
10.
Carlos DeLuna
Back to Texas.
In 1983, a 24-year-old gas station attendant named Wanda Lopez was murdered during a botched
robbery by what two witnesses reported as a “Hispanic” assailant.
An APB was put out, and soon after, nearby jogger Carlos DeLuna was brought in.
And this is where things get horrifying.
Despite there being no substantial evidence against him, Carlos still matched the description.
He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in 1989.
But while this is tragic, it isn’t the weird part.
All signs point to a completely different man with the same first name, Carlos Hernandez,
being the true killer.
In fact, Carlos Hernandez was an unstable man with a criminal history and even confessed
to the murder multiple times.
The eerie part is that the two Carloses looked exactly the same.
So much so that their own families couldn’t tell the two apart from photos.
Sometimes real life is even stranger than fiction.
9.
Derek Bentley
Back to England, for the bizarre case of Derek Bentley.
Derek, much like Timothy Evans, suffered from mental problems.
In IQ tests, he scored 66, compared to the average 98, suggesting he was mentally challenged
to some extent.
He and his younger partner in crime, Christopher Craig, broke into a candy factory with the
intent to commit robbery.
Derek was armed with a knuckle duster, and Craig with a revolver.
Police soon intercepted and apprehended the two criminals.
Derek had already been grabbed and restrained, and Craig was engaged in a tense standoff
with his revolver.
Police ordered Craig to surrender the weapon, and Derek, choosing his words poorly, told
Craig to “let them have it.”
Craig interpreted this as an order to attack and shot and killed a police officer on the
scene.
Craig was too young to be executed, but although Derek had not fired the lethal shot, he was
charged with inciting the murder and later executed for it in 1953 by hanging.
Craig left prison in 1963 after serving a decade for murder and became a plumber.
Like Timothy Evans, Derek was posthumously pardoned for his crime in 1998.
8.
George Kelly
Still in England, the Cameo Cinema Murders are two of the most infamous gangland killings
from the city of Liverpool - the city that gave us The Beatles.
A movie theatre owner and his assistant were both shot dead during a botched robbery, and
in the following days, police officers essentially interviewed the entire Liverpool criminal
underworld, looking for answers.
A number of witnesses pointed to 27-year-old laborer George Kelly.
It was a classic set up by police more eager to make a collar than catch the real killers.
Charles Connoley, the man suspected of being Kelly’s accomplice, was intimidated into
pleading guilty because he feared getting the death penalty too, and this only sealed
Kelly’s fate.
He was hanged in 1950.
Despite an entirely different man named Donald Johnson actually confessing to the murder
the year before.
7.
Frank Lee Smith
Now to Florida, for the tragic death of Frank Lee Smith.
Smith is slightly different from other entries on this list because he was never actually
executed by the state, but he did die of cancer on death row while waiting for his execution
- a depressingly common affair for death row inmates, innocent or otherwise.
But make no mistake, Frank Lee Smith was innocent.
Smith was convicted of murder and was convicted and sentenced to death.
He remained on death row for 14 years before succumbing to his cancer.
However, he was completely exonerated from the crime by DNA evidence...eleven months
after his death.
If he was never wrongly convicted, he could have spent his last years with his loved ones,
rather than rotting in a prison cell for a crime he didn’t commit.
6.
Mahmood Mattan
Back to the UK, in 1952, for perhaps the most clear-cut case of racial profiling on this
entire list.
Somali immigrant Mahmood Mattan was accused of a brutal murder in Wales by a known racist,
despite Mattan being in a completely different place and having a full alibi.
However, his poor grasp of English led him to be trounced during his brief trial, where
the prosecutor referred to him as, quote, “a semi-civilized savage.”
No, that wasn’t actually his prosecutor, that was his defense lawyer.
That’s how stacked the cards were against Mahmood Mattan.
He was quickly convicted and sentenced to death, leaving his wife and three children.
His wife was never even told of his execution date.
She only found out he was dead when she went to visit him in prison and found the notice
of his death pinned to a door.
The family was later given compensation for this horrific injustice.
Nearly 50 years later, that is.
5.
Leo Jones
Now back to Florida, for the execution of Leo Jones.
Jones was accused of the murder of a police officer, a crime that he confessed to, and
then was convicted and sentenced to death.
However, Jones repeatedly insisted that the confession was coerced, and he was actually
innocent.
This fell upon deaf ears, and he was executed in 1998, seventeen years after his 1981 conviction.
However, some pretty horrifying new evidence soon came to light.
The two officers who arrested Jones and extracted the confession were both fired due to a bevy
of ethical issues.
Most vital for us, though, is the fact that one of the two officers was accused of being
an “enforcer” who regularly used intimidation and even torture to force bogus confessions
out of his suspects.
This led an awful lot of credence to the statements of Leo Jones, but sadly, it was too late to
do anything about it.
4.
Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen
For those genuinely enthused in criminal history and the history of forensic investigation,
Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen is one of the most famous murderers of all time.
He was believed to have murdered his wife, before trying to flee to Canada with his lover.
However, he was the first-ever murderer to be caught with the aid of a remote telegram,
allowing the people on the ship to apprehend Crippen and bring him back to England.
His fate was sealed when the skin of a human torso was found behind the walls of his home,
with an appendectomy scar that matched one on Crippen’s missing wife.
He was tried and hanged for the murder.
However, in 2007, almost a century after Crippen’s execution in the early 1900s, researchers
discovered that the skin used to convict him may not have actually been that of Crippen’s
wife, it was actually the skin of a man.
This has led to the possibility that Crippen was actually set up by Pathologist Sir Bernand
Spilsbury, who simply intended to use the case to advance the public perception of his
own forensic methods.
3.
Domineque Ray
Alabama made headlines in 2019 with the execution of Domineque Ray.
Ray was a Muslim, and as such, requested an Imam in his execution chamber to provide religious
comfort before he died - in much the same way a Christian inmate can receive this comfort
from a reverend or priest.
But Alabama denied this to Ray.
And not just that, when people looked into Ray’s execution, it became clear that the
entire basis of his execution was essentially baseless.
Ray was accused and convicted of robbery, and murder of a fifteen-year-old girl in 1999.
However, the only witness placing him in Selma, Alabama, when the crime took place was Marcus
Owden, a severely mentally ill man who had first confessed to the crime himself, before
accusing Ray to save his own skin.
Marcus suffered from severe schizophrenia, and couldn’t be trusted to make his own
testimony, but the courts insisted on his competency.
Domineque Ray was executed on the words of a man whom nobody should have trusted.
2.
Robert Pruett
And of course, we return once again to Texas.
Robert Pruett was already in a correctional facility for unrelated offenses when it seemed
that he had murdered Prison Officer Daniel Nagle for giving him a disciplinary write-up
for eating a sandwich in an unauthorized area.
The corpse of Nagle was found next to a bloody shiv, and a torn-up copy of the write-up.
Seemed like a pretty open and shut case, and Pruett was executed for it in 2017.
However, much like Timothy Evans, Pruett ended up actually being the fall guy for a far more
sinister plot going on.
It turned out that Nagle was investigating a major corruption accusation against some
of his fellow officers, who were working with organized crime power players in jail to launder
money.
Nagle got too close and was murdered by the gangs for trying to expose the corruption.
Four of his coworkers were indicted for the exact kind of corruption Nagle was investigating
on the same day Pruett was indicted for Nagle’s murder.
He just happened to be in the wrong prison at the wrong time.
And finally, 1.
Richard Masterson
Yep, it’s Texas.
Again.
Richard Masterson is a unique case because not only is it very likely he didn’t actually
commit the murder he was accused of, it’s also extremely possible that no murder was
committed at all.
Masterson, in a state of withdrawal from addictive stimulants that caused erratic and often suicidal
thoughts and behavior, confessed to the murder of his sexual partner, Darrin Honeycutt, after
performing a chokehold on him during consensual erotic asphyxiation.
The medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Honeycutt reinforced the idea that they
were looking at capital murder here.
And in 2016, Masterson was executed for it.
But things really aren’t that simple.
It’s now widely believed that the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Honeycutt
was not reliable in any regard.
And the jury was not made aware of the fact they could convict Masterson on a lesser charge,
such as manslaughter.
Subsequent examinations on Honeycutt have shown that he very likely died of a heart
attack, meaning no murder was committed here.
While on death row, Masterson converted to catholicism and kept in touch with Pope Francis
himself, who opposed Masterson’s execution.
But sadly, in the end, it was all just too little, too late.
Something you hear depressingly often in cases of miscarried justice like this.
And there you have it: Thirteen people, either definitively proven innocent after their deaths,
or at the very least with strong evidence pointing towards innocence.
Over 1500 people have been executed in the United States alone since 1975, and while
execution is far less frequent in the Western world these days, many people still sit on
death row, pleading innocence or requesting appeals.
It raises the question: Is it right for the death penalty to continue, given how many
innocent lives have been collateral damage?
Let us know where you stand on this debate down in the comments.
Now check out “Innocent on Death Row, Here's What You Actually Get When You're Released”
and “50 Insane Execution and Death Penalty Facts That Will Shock You” for more horrifying
facts about this controversial punishment!