2 – Not Every Person Who Died in the Chair Was Guilty
One of the most compelling arguments against the death penalty is the potential execution of innocent individuals. William Blackstone, an English jurist, famously said: “Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” Capital punishment proponents unsurprisingly take the opposite view and assert that the occasional death of an innocent person is a small price to pay for executing heinous criminals such as John Wayne Gacy. The Death Penalty Information Center website admits that there is no way of knowing how many innocent people have been executed in the United States.
However, the site goes on to mention a few examples of people who, on the weight of evidence, probably didn’t commit the crime they died for. Leo Jones met his maker in Old Sparky in 1998 for the murder of a police officer in Jacksonville, Florida. While Jones signed a confession within hours of his arrest, there is a distinct possibility that he was coerced into doing so. A few years later, the man who arrested Jones was kicked off the police force for ethical violations.
A fellow officer later admitted that this policeman was known as a brutal enforcer who tortured suspects. Furthermore, several people came forward and pointed to another suspect in the case. Jones had allegedly killed a police officer with a sniper rifle in 1981. During the lengthy period between his arrest and execution, the main witness against Jones had recanted, it was deemed likely that the confession was beaten out of Jones, and at least a dozen people implicated another shooter. Yet incredibly, his appeals were rejected, and he was electrocuted in 1998.
Jesse Tafero was executed in 1990 for the 1976 murders of Donald Irwin and Phillip Black, two members of the Florida Highway Patrol. The two officers performed a routine check on a car that was parked at a rest stop. Tafero, Sonia Jacobs (his partner), and Walter Rhodes were asleep inside. Rhodes claimed it was Tafero who shot the men and when the trio was arrested, the gun was found in Tafero’s waistband.
At the trial, Rhodes continued to protest his innocence and claimed Tafero and Jacobs were the culprits. While Rhodes received three life sentences, he was released in 1994. Jacobs was sentenced to death, but it was later commuted to life imprisonment. Tafero was not so lucky and died in the electric chair. To make matters worse, there was a malfunction, so the execution took 13 minutes to complete. Rhodes confessed to the murders after Tafero’s death in what was a final, cruel twist.