Death penalty laws that permit judges to sentence a defendant to death even when jurors in the case have voted for life create a heightened risk that an innocent person will be wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death.
Twenty-three death-row exonerations in Florida, five in Alabama, and one in Delaware have come in cases in which trial judges overruled jury recommendations for life or imposed the death penalty after non-unanimous jury votes for death. These twenty-nine cases make up more than ninety percent of the exonerations in those states for which the jury vote is known, as well as fifteen percent of all exonerations from wrongful capital convictions in the United States since 1972.
Here are the death-row exonerations in cases involving non-unanimous jury sentencing votes or judicial overrides of jury votes for life, the jury votes (where known) in the cases, and the contributing factors to the underlying wrongful capital convictions.
| Death Penalty Policy Project analysis based upon data from the National Registry of Exonerations and the Death Penalty Information Center. |
For additional information and analysis, see:
Robert Dunham, DPIC Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic, Death Penalty Information Center (Feb. 2021).
Robert Brett Dunham, DPIC Analysis: Exoneration Data Suggests Non-Unanimous Death-Sentencing Statutes Heighten Risk of Wrongful Convictions, Death Penalty Information Center (Mar. 13, 2020).
Patrick Mulvaney and Katherine Chamblee, Innocence and Override, Yale Law Journal Forum, pp. 118-123 (Aug. 8, 2016).