Honors Program
University Honors
Date of Award
5-2022
Thesis Professor(s)
Bradley Edwards
Thesis Professor Department
Criminal Justice and Criminology
Thesis Reader(s)
Jennifer Pealer
Abstract
The death penalty has had many regulations placed since its first use in America to make the process more equitable, but people are still being wrongfully sentenced to die. Using a data set of 139 exonerations over a period from 1980 to 2021, the current study examined some prominent factors in wrongful death penalty convictions and how these factors have changed or endured over time. The major findings revealed that racial disparity still exists in the legal process, but it is declining. Exonerees are more likely to have three or more contributing factors (perjury or false accusation, official misconduct, false or misleading forensic evidence, et cetera) in their wrongful death penalty convictions. Official misconduct and perjury or false accusation are by far the most common reasons for a wrongful conviction. The current study also found that often, DNA is not available to test or is simply not being tested, and there is a downward trend overall in the amount of DNA testing being done. Recommendations for further improvements are discussed.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Wakefield, Brittany, "The Death Penalty: Recent trends in exonerations and recommendations for further improvements" (2022). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 698. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/698
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.