I was listening to a NPR program this morning about capital punishment, and as always the topic can hardly be discussed without the mention of hundreds of innocent people being put to death.
So this got me thinking. Has there ever been a crime were two different people have been sentenced or put to death for the same crime? Both the innocent and the guilty party.
Did NPR really claim that hundreds of innocent people have been executed? Over what time span?
As to your question, I have heard people argue that in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, only Sacco was guilty, but that may not be what you mean.
If you mean two people being executed for a murder in which the murderer acted alone, no, I am not aware of any such case.
Regards,
Shodan
I believe what the OP is asking is whether an innocent person has been tried for a crime, mistakenly convicted, and executed; and then later it has been discovered that a different person was actually guilty of the crime, and that person has also been tried and executed.
In the USA, the answer is no. There are no undisputed proven cases of innocent people being executed. While a few convictions may be debatable, certainly there has never been a case where someone has been convicted of a crime after someone else had been executed for it. after the ionnocent party had spent years in prison, yes. After execution, no.
There was a famous case in England, though.
That is what I am asking.
Shodan
The NPR program was I believe Justice Talking. And yes I believe it was Margot Adler stateing that hundreds of innocent people have been executed. No time span given.
This doesn’t quite fit the bill.
Timothy Evans was charged with killing his wife Beryl & daughter Geraldine but was tried and convicted only of killing Geraldine. John Christie was charged with a total of 7 murders, including that of Beryl, but was tried and convicted only of killing his own wife Ethel. He was never charged with killing Geraldine.
Evans was pardoned posthumously for killing his daughter, a pardon being forgiveness for crimes committed, but his conviction was never actually quashed. Although the judiciary accepts that Evans murdered neither his wife nor his child he has never been officially declared innocent because the cost and resources of quashing the conviction cannot, apparently, be justified.
It’s all in your link.
Here’s a case to consider: Gregory Resnover #256
The point in this case being, Gregory Resnover was never accused of shooting or handling the weapon that killed the police officer. Yet he was executed.
Innocent? Hardly. But the convicted shooter was also executed, for shooting the very same officer. So, in a sense, a man who didn’t commit the specific crime was executed for it. (There was a big ruckus about it when the execution happened, and I worked for a local newspaper at the time. That’s the only reason it came to mind.)
This case doesn’t fit the bill because it sounds like Resnover was executed for on a capital murder charge as an accomplice. Although there may be a question of whether the severity of his actions was an appropriate basis for execution as a matter of policy, as a matter of law accomplices and principals share the same criminal liability.