Beyond A Reasonable Doubt? A Look Into The Death Penalty System

Abiraami Elangovan

Edited by Samantha Tonini, Mihir Gokhale, Mac Kang, and Sahith Mocharla

I. Introduction

On September 21, 2011, Troy Davis was executed after being convicted of killing a police officer in Savannah, Georgia, with mountains of evidence suggesting his innocence left untouched [1]. Troy Davis’ case is not an isolated incident. Rather, it serves as a searing indictment of a death penalty system that executes the possibly innocent and challenges the constitutional boundaries upon which this nation was built. In fact, using survival analysis—a statistical method that models the likelihood of an event happening over time—the National Institutes of Health (NIH) predicts that “if all death-sentenced defendants remained under sentence of death indefinitely, at least 4.1% would be exonerated” [2]. In a nation with one of the largest number of executions, such a statistic raises an important ethical and constitutional dilemma: should a system with such a high probability of killing the innocent be allowed to last? 

II. Historical Context

The death penalty has been a long-standing part of the United States justice system, dating back to colonial times and stemming from the influence of the British criminal justice system. Since 1608, over 15,000 executions have been recorded in the United States––more than any other Western nation [3]. Its global usage began waning in the twentieth century as other Western countries stopped using, or even abolished it altogether, on ethical and practical grounds since it was deemed to serve as not enough of a crime deterrent to justify the potential loss of innocent lives. Following this pattern, the United States also briefly banned the death penalty under Furman v. Georgia (1976) in a 5-4 decision, citing that “the death penalty is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment,” especially when “imposed in an arbitrary and capricious manner that leads to discriminatory results” [4]. The decision made in Furman was a result of increased critical discourse around the constitutionality and ethicality of the death penalty over the several prior decades, and reflected changing attitudes in the United States towards procedural fairness and human rights in the justice system [5]. 

However, the victories that came with Furman were short-lived. A mere 4 years later, Furman was undermined by Gregg v. Georgia (1976), as states changed their laws regarding the death penalty to find loopholes around what Furman declared to be arbitrary and capricious. Gregg allowed the death penalty to be reintroduced in Georgia, Texas, and Florida, stating that the state laws concerning capital punishment in these states had “sufficient clarity and objectivity in defining which defendants could be eligible for capital punishment and gave juries sufficient discretion in choosing whether to apply it” [6]. This established a new precedent regarding the death penalty by essentially returning the issue back to the states and addressing the arbitrariness of the death penalty, one of the key reasons why Furman found the death penalty to be unconstitutional in 1972. The precedent established by Gregg has remained, but scientific advancements and studies have, over time, established a convincing case for the significant failures of the death penalty system, including the rise of DNA testing and knowledge about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony throughout the late twentieth century [7]. The proliferation of these new methods of collecting evidence slowly began to undermine the ethicality and constitutionality of capital punishment as increasingly more details came to light regarding incorrect rulings and the execution of innocent people. 

III. Systemic Issues That Allow For Wrongful Convictions

A key factor in the executions of innocent people has been the systemic failure of judicial decision making based on flawed or unreliable evidence. The repercussions of such oversight in the justice system are not merely theoretical; they have been proven to contribute to wrongful executions time and time again. In April of 2012, the Washington Post exposed a nine-year investigation in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran a review of hair samples in suspect cases, many of which resulted in death row sentences. Despite finding significant anomalies that severely undermined the credibility of the hair samples used to convict the defendants, the Department of Justice (DOJ) did nothing to inform the defendants of this newfound evidence or investigate their possible innocence [8]. This failure reflects a deeper structural issue with the United States justice system: under current disclosure laws, state and federal authorities are not required to disclose potentially exonerating evidence after the defendant has already been convicted under District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne (2009) [9]. Such laws raise the question: does our legal system really only sentence defendants when the evidence against them proves their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, or simply when it is most convenient for legal efficacy?

Perhaps the most well-known example of flawed evidence leading to a wrongful conviction is that of Claude Jones. Claude Jones was convicted and sentenced to execution in 1990 for the alleged murder of a liquor store owner based on a singular eyewitness testimony and a hair found at the crime scene. Although Jones repeatedly maintained his innocence and requested a stay of execution to test the hair for DNA evidence, this stay was denied, as then-governor George Bush was busy with his presidential campaign and was not even informed of the stay request by his clemency advisors [10]. Jones was put to death in December of 2000. The Innocence Project brought up his case as a potential wrongful conviction in 2007, and the hair that sentenced Jones was obtained and tested in 2010 after a three-year legal battle—only to find that it did not belong to Jones at all. This decisively exonerated him, as the eyewitness who testified against Jones also later recanted their testimony [11]. Jones’ case sparked public outrage and serves as a testament to how the justice system has failed to save innocent people from execution.

While Jones’ case gained public scrutiny for highlighting the catastrophes of flawed forensic evidence, both his and Troy Davis’ cases underscore another type of faulty evidence: unreliable eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimonies as a whole are known for their unreliability, with “over three-quarters of known erroneous convictions [being], in part, the result of mistaken eyewitness identifications” [12]. The incredibly high percentage of eyewitness testimonies in erroneous convictions is a result of various factors, including reconstructive memory, coercion, and suggestive questioning, and casts doubt onto the reliability of judgements that are made on these testimonies alone [13]. Davis was convicted of murder almost wholly based on nine eyewitness testimonies. However, in the years between his sentencing and his execution, seven of nine eyewitnesses came forward and either recanted or changed their statements, with some stating that they had either not read their original statement before signing it or, frighteningly, had been coerced or pressured by police to give their statement [14]. Tragically, although this evidence likely would have exonerated him and potentially prevented his death, it never came to light in the trial. Davis was executed in 2011. This tragedy reveals both the inability of defendants to challenge convictions in court and the issue of a capital sentence on the basis of eyewitness testimony alone.

Davis' Sisyphean hurdles in presenting this evidence in court sparked widespread public indignation, but his case is merely a symptom of the deeper, longstanding legal barriers that impede proving one’s innocence post-conviction. When a defendant is sentenced to the death penalty, as Davis was, the first step in appealing their conviction is typically to directly appeal to the state’s highest court for criminal appeals. The issue with state appellate courts, however, is that “appeals are limited to allegations of procedural errors by the trial court” [15]. This means that appeals can only review if the law was applied correctly in the lower court’s decision, not re-evaluate their decision based on new evidence, even if the evidence would exonerate the defendant. Thus, after Davis appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia and his convictions were confirmed on the basis that there were no procedural errors with the trial court that convicted him, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal [16]. 

The next step for many defendants who wish to appeal their conviction on the basis of evidence, and not procedural errors, is to file a writ of habeas corpus, which allows them more freedom in introducing new evidence and re-interviewing witnesses. Davis thus filed and was approved for his first state habeas corpus appeal. However, his legal counsel failed to re-interview witnesses as they were supposed to and thus completely missed the witness testimony recantations that could have rightfully exonerated him. Without this crucial evidence, the petition was denied [17]. Since Davis’ counsel missed the evidence due to an error on their behalf and not because their key evidence— the eyewitness testimonies—were inaccessible, he did not qualify for a second habeas appeal under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) and was instead condemned to the death penalty. AEDPA, introduced as a result of the Oklahoma City bombings in an attempt to increase the severity of the death penalty and thus deter crimes worthy of capital punishment, put rigid barriers in place regarding habeas appeals. Unless the defendant’s claim relies on a new Supreme Court ruling to be applied retroactively, or new evidence comes to light that the defense could not have possibly accessed during the first appeal through the exercise of due diligence, a second appeal would not be approved [18]. Davis’ inability to appeal despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence, as well as institutional legal barriers such as the AEDPA, highlight an alarming intention of prioritizing procedural efficacy over achieving justice.

Even when appeals are approved and new evidence can be introduced, the system continues to fail defendants because of a lack of guaranteed legal representation to make their case. The right to counsel is a constitutional right that has long been enshrined in the sixth amendment of the United States Constitution, which states that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence” [19]. However, this right does not extend to death penalty convicts seeking habeas relief, justified under the assumption that sufficient counsel was already granted in the direct appeals process, leading to a lack of the legal safeguards that were intended to protect defendants and ensure equal treatment under the law [20]. This means that defendants cannot contest an appellate decision on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel, even if it is evident that the representation they received was inadequate. In Davis' case, the nonprofit that was representing him had lost much of its funding and as a result failed to re-interview the witnesses as it should have. By failing to re-interview witnesses, they were unaware of new, crucial evidence that could have granted Davis' petition for habeas relief. Instead, it was denied. Since his right to counsel was not protected as a death penalty convict, Davis could not file for a habeas appeal on the grounds that the nonprofit’s mistake constituted inadequate counsel, as adequate counsel was never guaranteed to him in the first place. This is an issue that has been reemphasized in the executions of countless innocent men and women under the death penalty, and Troy Davis' case once again serves as a crucial example.

While Davis’ lawyers’ negligence stemmed from his counsel being understaffed and underfunded, other cases of attorney negligence arise out of conflicts of interest or even inebriation. Such was the case of Ledell Lee, a man convicted of the brutal murder of Debra Reese, his 18-year-old neighbor. Throughout his trial, his counsel was compromised in several ways, the first of which was his lawyer’s inebriation during his trial. Lee was a mentally compromised defendant, as he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder [21]. Thus, he should have been protected under Atkins v. Virginia (2002), which ruled that sentencing mentally compromised defendants to death constituted cruel and unusual punishment and thus was unconstitutional [22]. Lee’s lawyer’s failure to prove this crucial point—in part due to his inebriation—was an ultimately fatal oversight that impeded Lee from accessing the representation that he constitutionally deserved and likely resulted in his capital sentencing [23]. The second manner in which his right to counsel and a fair trial was compromised was through the judge presiding over the proceedings of his case. Judge John W. Langston was reportedly having an affair with the assistant prosecutor, severely compromising the integrity of the ruling and raising questions about the constitutionality of the trial [24]. This affair violated the foundational requirement of the courtroom that the judge can be a neutral arbiter, making it likely that the judge was more deferential to the prosecution, or conversely biased against the defendant, due to personal interests. Both of the affair and the intoxication of Lee’s lawyer led to a conviction against Lee without DNA testing for the murder weapon, evidence that could have proven him to be non-guilty altogether. Despite overwhelming evidence of inadequate legal counsel and significant grounds for an unfair trial, Lee was not granted a stay of execution because this evidence was not presented at the earliest possible opportunity, or the first appeal [25]. Thus, it was dismissed as procedurally defaulted, meaning a legal claim cannot be reviewed because the party presenting the claim failed to follow proper court procedures. Without a stay of execution, Lee was sentenced to lethal injection and executed in 2017. His case, just like Davis', underscores a troubling judicial tendency to dole out final, cruel punishments without sufficient proof, counsel, or arbitration to justify it.

IV. Ethical and Constitutional Implications

The systemic failures of the death penalty system are not merely procedural defects of an otherwise functional justice system; they expose stark ethical and constitutional concerns that undermine the foundation upon which this nation was built. The role of the eighth amendment in particular, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, has been a central point of debate, from the overarching issue of the justice system’s ability to arbitrarily take away a human life, to more specific issues such as the application of the death penalty to the intellectually disabled—as debated in Hamm—and the constitutionality of denying habeas relief on the basis of claims of actual innocence, as debated in Herrera [26][27]. As new laws are passed and public opinion has shifted over time, the constitutionality of the death penalty has served as a consistent issue of contention, from Furman v. Georgia in 1976 to Herrera v. Collins in 1993 to Hamm v. Smith as recently as 2024.

Herrera, in particular, established a powerful precedent that a defendant’s “claim of actual innocence does not entitle him to federal habeas relief” under the Eighth Amendment in death penalty cases [28]. In 1981, Leonel Torres Herrera was charged with the murder of Texas police officer Enrique Carrisalez and DPS officer David Rucker on the basis of a written letter by Herrera implying guilt, Carrisalez’s testimony before his death, and the presence of the victims’ blood in Herrera’s car. He was sentenced to death shortly thereafter. Later, when multiple pieces of evidence came to light suggesting that his late brother had committed the crime, Herrera’s lawyers filed for a habeas petition to grant a temporary stay of execution in order to present the evidence, arguing that the defendant was to be guaranteed habeas relief under the Eighth Amendment due to overwhelming proof of innocence. This petition was denied, with the court holding that in “criminal cases, the trial is the paramount event for determining the defendant's guilt or innocence” [29]. After a defendant is offered a fair trial and convicted, “the constitutional presumption of innocence disappears” and the court is no longer obligated to hear habeas petitions for relief, and refusing to do so does not violate the Eighth Amendment [30]. Herrera was thus a pivotal case in defining legal safeguards and constitutional protections—or rather, the lack thereof—in death penalty cases across the United States.

While Herrera established that habeas relief—even with significant proof of innocence—is not protected under the Eighth Amendment, this decision does not absolve itself from ethical concerns for a system that arbitrarily hands out death sentences and denies defendants the right to contest them; if anything, it plays a role in further exacerbating moral concerns and eroding public trust in the justice system. According to recent Gallup polling, “public support for the death penalty remains at a five-decade low” of 53 percent, and “more than half of young U.S. adults ages 18 through 43 now oppose the death penalty” [31]. This rising opposition to capital punishment comes as a result of centuries of systemic injustices within the death penalty system, such as those detailed throughout Davis, Jones, and Lee’s cases, alongside an increasing awareness of the human rights violations and cruelty of capital punishment. In an investigation into the conditions faced by those on death row, studies found that subjecting convicts to decades on death row tends to induce psychological illnesses and, in some cases, even “cause inmates to regress to a state of psychic numbness that produces psychological death” [32]. The undeniably cruel conditions of death row, such as decades of extreme solitary confinement and immobility, raise concerns once more about the human rights of these inmates in a justice system that does not seem to respect their constitutional rights post-conviction. 

It is important to acknowledge here the reasons for the continued, although waning, support for the death penalty throughout the history of the United States. According to a survey taken in 1991, “most Americans who favor the death penalty do so primarily for retributive reasons”, meaning their primary reason is the justification of a “life for a life” [33]. This distinction is important to make, for while many Americans believe that the death penalty deters crime, they do not believe that it is the best deterrent for crime. Thus, hard-on-crime stances are more likely to be based on a desire for retribution than a belief in the deterrent power of the death penalty. This stance, while understandable considering the severity of crimes that must be committed to warrant the death penalty, is a dangerous basis for a legal framework such as the death penalty to be established on. To dole out capital punishment on the basis of retribution creates an arbitrary—and thus inherently unjust—system that is more likely to ignore procedural fairness or overlook evidentiary standards in the trial process, as established in Furman [34]. 

Deterrence, on the other hand, is a legally recognized standard that many states in the U.S. still use to justify the death penalty. The idea is that the threat of receiving capital punishment for a crime will make potential offenders less likely to commit it, thus deterring heinous crimes such as statutory rape or first-degree murder. However, the supposed effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent has actually been disproven several times. According to studies conducted by Amnesty International, in 2004, “the average murder rate for states that used the death penalty was 5.71 [people] per 100,000 of the population as [compared to the rate of] 4.02 [people] per 100,000 in states that did not use it,” demonstrating that the death penalty does not, in fact, effectively deter violent crime [35]. Further evidence that points to the inefficacy of the death penalty as a deterrent is proven through Canada’s “murder rate fall[ing] by 44 percent since [the abolition of the death penalty] in 1975” [36]. This study is not an individual statistic, but rather one of many across several decades that may imply a troubling reality: societies that normalize the death penalty, through either convictions or support for it, seem to be the same ones that are already predisposed to violence and heinous crimes. Thus, the death penalty does not seem to deter crime, but rather brutalize it through a state-sanctioned cycle of violence.

Finally, the death penalty as a whole raises ethical concerns due to the inherent finality of this punishment. Cases such as those of Jones or Lee testify to changing standards of evidence as technology and information continue to develop every day. This ever-shifting standard of evidence—and simultaneously, exposure of past imprecise sentencing methodology—starkly contrasts the finality of a death sentence that cannot be revoked post-execution, and usually will not be revoked even when the defendant is still alive. These cases of executions despite strong evidence of innocence make up a series of alarming ethical transgressions that value legal closure over human life, eroding the moral and constitutional legitimacy of the criminal justice system itself and disrespecting the foundations of due process and justice upon which this nation was built.

V. Conclusion

The persistence of wrongful convictions, and the role of the justice system in carrying out these convictions to executions despite evidence that overwhelmingly suggests innocence and consistent procedural mistakes, reveals a profound and ongoing failure in the American death penalty construct. These injustices are so deeply entrenched in the American justice system, from the historic usage of unreliable evidence to precedents enforcing habeas appeal barriers to the denial of the constitutional right to counsel for death penalty convicts. The preeminence that the United States’s judicial system gives to procedural efficacy over fairness cannot be justified when it is the lives of innocent people, those whom the U.S. government exists to serve and protect, that are on the line, and it is crucial that we bring about more robust habeas corpus protections, remove barriers to introducing evidence post-conviction, and guarantee legal counsel for all defendants.

Robust habeas corpus protections would allow for federal courts to fully consider claims of actual innocence by permitting the federal judiciary to review state convictions and lowering procedural barriers to proving actual innocence, such as AEDPA. Seeing as the premise upon which AEDPA was based—that strengthening the death penalty would deter crime—has been disproven time and again, breaking down the current barriers would not only save lives and better serve justice, but also deter crime in the long run. Had Davis had these protections, a life would not have been lost meaninglessly due to procedural errors in the face of possible innocence, or at least non-guilt.

The blockage of post-conviction evidence in courts, which many states allow their prosecutors to do, is a gross misuse of government power and a direct obstruction to the unveiling of evidence, which is especially paramount when this evidence is the determining factor of whether or not someone is sentenced to death. Jones’ needless death, as well as his posthumous exoneration, serve as a testament to the dangers of blocking forensic evidence at any stage of the judicial process. Guaranteeing the right to test forensic evidence at any time and lowering the threshold so that courts can admit evidence that casts reasonable doubt over a conviction will only further the accuracy of court decisions and save lives.

Finally, the last essential reform that must be made to help build a fair death penalty system lies in guaranteeing competent legal counsel for all defendants, including those on death row, at all stages in the legal process. Many death row defendants have underfunded or otherwise compromised representation, as seen in Davis and Lee’s cases, and many more lose their counsel after conviction. Guaranteeing a right to counsel for death row convicts, and further implementing mandatory standards for capital defense competency, would therefore reduce errors in cases with ineffective representation and ensure cases with wrongful convictions such as Jones do not slip through the cracks of the justice system.

Cases such as those of Davis, Lee, and Jones are not isolated instances of the failures of this system, but rather one of many such cases that have built the death penalty system into the machine of wrongful convictions that it is today. With an estimated four percent of death row convicts sentenced incorrectly, it is imperative that reforms are made to prevent further bloodshed. Although there may be no immediate solution to fixing a fundamentally broken system, it is crucial that the United States justice system works to strengthen habeas corpus protections, allow post-conviction evidence, and ensure competent legal counsel for all defendants, regardless of previous conviction or petition status, in order to deliver the equity in trial that so many Americans so whole heartedly believe in.

These reforms, however necessary, will take quite some time, sustained advocacy, and structural overhaul to realistically implement. For now, the death penalty system serves as a mere echo of the promises it has voiced to the American people. Beyond a reasonable doubt? Maybe in theory, but certainly not in practice.

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[1] How Our Law Executed Troy Davis, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2011/10/20/how-our-law-executed-troy-davis/ (Oct. 20, 2011).

[2] Samuel R Gross, Barbara O’Brien, Chen Hu, Edward H Kennedy, Rate of false conviction of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death, National Library of Medicine (Apr. 28, 2014), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4034186/.

[3] Emily Gill, The Evolution of the Death Penalty in the United States, Cornell Undergraduate Law & Society Review (Jun. 17, 2023), https://www.culsr.org/articles/the-evolution-of-the-death-penalty-in-the-united-states-4wen7.

[4] Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). 

[5] Elaine McArdle, The End of the Death Penalty?, Harvard Law Bulletin (Feb. 14, 2023), https://hls.harvard.edu/today/the-end-of-the-death-penalty/.

[6] Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976).

[7] Joseph L. Hoffmann, Is Innocence Sufficient? An Essay on the U.S. Supreme Court's

Continuing Problems with Federal Habeas Corpus and the Death Penalty, Indiana Law Journal, https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1516&context=ilj (last visited Oct. 28, 2025).

[8] Jessica Dwyer-Moss, Flawed Forensics and the Death Penalty: Junk Science and

Potentially Wrongful Executions, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1658&context=sjsj (last visited Oct. 28, 2025).

[9] District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, 557 U.S. 52 (2009)

[10] See [8]

[11] See [8]

[12] Jon B. Gould, Julia Carrano, Richard Leo, Joseph Young, Predicting Erroneous Convictions: A Social Science Approach to Miscarriages of Justice, NCJRS, https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/241389.pdf (last visited Nov. 18, 2025).

[13] See [12]

[14] See [8]

[15] See [1]

[16] See [1]

[17] See [1]

[18] See [1]

[19] US Const. amend. VI, § 1. 

[20] See [1]

[22] Ledell Lee v. State of Arkansas, 2009 Ark. 158 (unpublished) 

[23] Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002)

[24] Ledell Lee v. State of Arkansas, ACLU, https://www.aclu.org/cases/ledell-lee-v-state-arkansas (last visited Oct. 28, 2025).

[25] See [24]

[26] Hamm v. Smith, 604 U.S. __ (2024). 

[27] Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993).

[28] See [26]

[29] See [19]

[30] See [27]

[31] The Death Penalty in 2024, Death Penalty Information Center, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/research/analysis/reports/year-end-reports (last visited Oct. 28, 2025).

[32] Jane Paden, The Sword of Damocles In American Law: The Cruel and Unusual Nature of the Death Penalty, Washington University Undergraduate Law Review, https://journals.library.wustl.edu/wuulr/article/8962/galley/25721/view/ (last visited Oct. 28, 2025).

[33] Samuel R. Gross, Update: American Public Opinion on the Death Penalty-It’s Getting Personal, Cornell Law Review, https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=2737 (last visited Oct. 28, 2025).

[34] See [4]

[35] Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime?, Amnesty International, https://www.amnesty.org/fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/act500062008en.pdf (last visited Oct. 28, 2025).

[36] See [35]