The death penalty’s flaws have been well-documented. But a new report from the Justice Department’s Inspector General reveals some of the most troubling evidence yet, and provides a fresh reminder of why North Carolina and other states will forever be on shaky ground until they abolish it.
The FBI used flawed forensic evidence and overstated testimony by 13 lab examiners to help convict up to 64 murder suspects and put them on death row, the report said. Yet Justice and the FBI took five years to identify those suspects and delayed telling state prosecutors that it was reviewing the cases, so the states had no way of knowing that the convictions might be flawed.
At least three men were executed before a Justice Department task force fully reviewed those cases. In at least one, the defendant would not have been eligible for the death penalty without the FBI’s flawed work, the report said. (The Justice Department generally agreed with the report’s findings.)
Among the 64 on death row with questionable cases were two from South Carolina: Donald Gaskins was executed in 1991 and Leroy Drayton was executed in 1999. In addition, 17 Carolinas cases were among 402 in which defendants were convicted on evidence so problematic that the task force ordered an independent scientific review of the FBI examiners’ work. The report was able to confirm that prosecutors revealed the findings to only 15 of the 402.
Source: The Charlotte Observer, July 23, 2014
