I hear about innocent people being freed from death row. But are they really innocent? Didn’t the... (Innocence)

Contrary to popular belief, it is extremely difficult to have a conviction overturned. For those innocent people lucky enough to be exonerated, it took extraordinary resources outside of the normal channels for the evidence to be heard. Volunteer lawyers, students, family, and friends often had to fight lengthy legal battles to finally have their day in court.

It is more likely that an execution will go forward on a technicality – because legal barriers prevented the courts from hearing new evidence, or because a lawyer missed a filing deadline or didn’t make an objection at the right time.

Consider the Missouri case of Joe Amrine. The prosecutor actually told the judge that even if Amrine was factually innocent, he should be executed because the legal process should not drag on and on. Courts actually refused to hear evidence of Amrine’s innocence because they said his original trial lawyer should have known the information – and therefore it didn’t count as “new.” It took 18 years for Amrine to be exonerated and freed.