This Week in Innocence

Radley Balko | July 8, 2009

Thanks to the work of Northwestern University Law School's death penalty clinic, another man wrongly convicted of murder walked free this week. Ronald Kitchen spent 13 of his 21 years behind bars on death row. He's also another case of someone who falsely confessed to a murder after intense questioning from police interrogators.

Illinois has sentenced 224 people to death since reinstating capital punishment in 1977. Since then, 20 have been exonerated. I'm not sure what an acceptable rate of error in death penalty cases would be, but nine percent seems awfully high, doesn't it?