The number of people sent to death row only later to be proven to be completely innocent of the crime for which they were convicted now stands at 119, with the addition of a Ohio man to the list.
Here is what the Death Penalty Information Center has to report:
On February 28, 2005, Ohio Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus dismissed all charges against Derrick Jamison for the death of a Cincinnati bartender after prosecutors elected not to retry him in the case. (Associated Press, March 3, 2005). The prosecution had withheld critical eyewitness statements and other evidence from the defense resulting in the overturning of Jamison's conviction in 2002. Jamison was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 based in part on the testimony of Charles Howell, a co-defendant who had his own sentence reduced in exchange for his testimony against Jamison.
The prosecution withheld statements that contradicted Howell’s testimony and that would have undermined the prosecution’s theory of how the victim died, and would have pointed to other possible suspects for the murder. Two federal courts ruled that the prosecution's actions denied Jamison of a fair trial. (Jamison v. Collins, 291 F.3d 380 (6th Cir. 2002)).
One of the withheld statments involved James Suggs, an eyewitness to the robbery. Suggs testified at trial that he had been unable to make a positive identification when the police showed him a photo array of suspects. In fact, police records show that Suggs identified two suspects, neither of which was Derrick Jamison. Additional withheld evidence consisted of a series of discrepancies between Jamison’s physical characteristics and the descriptions of the perpetrators given to police investigators by eyewitnesses.
To read more and to learn about the previous 118 exonoreers, go here.
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