Michigan, where I live, does not have capital punishment and was one of the first government’s in the world to ban capital punishment for all crimes except treason (the state later abolished the potential treason punishment as well). And a story in The New York Times illustrates why — a Detroit man was just released after spending more than 17 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit.
Eddie Joe Lloyd was convicted of the 1984 rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl and the evidence at his trial was more than enough to convict him. After all, the jury got to hear an audiotape of a detailed confession that Lloyd gave to police (he also signed a written confession) and Lloyd knew details about the crime not released to the public.
Lloyd became a suspect in the case when he wrote to police from the mental hospital where he had been committed asking to see the case file for the murder of the young girl. In his letter, Lloyd mentioned that the girl had been sexually assaulted with a green bottle. That was in fact correct, but it was a detail the police had not made public.
Police interviewed him three times, made the audiotape of his confession, and Lloyd was convicted. But Lloyd maintains that he only made the confession as part of an effort to trip up the real killer. Lloyd’s mental illness apparently led him to confess to the crime out of some bizarre view that by doing so he would help capture the real killer.
DNA tests on both that bottle and on the underwear used to strangle the victim showed that Lloyd was not the killer and he was released after prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed that his conviction should be overturned.
After he was released, Lloyd said,
I consider myself lucky. Seventeen years? If Michigan had the death penalty, I would have been through, the angels would have sung a long time ago.
Michigan originally banned capital punishment after the wrongful execution of a man in the early 19th century. Even if it is acceptable for the state to kill its own citizens in cold blood (which I firmly maintain it is not), the risk of executing innocent individuals is an intolerable risk.
Source:
Man freed after DNA clears him of murder. Jodi Wilgoren, The New York Times, August 27, 2002.