In the 24 years since the Supreme Court authorized the resumption of capital punishment, over 620 convicted murderers have been executed. Not one has subsequently been proven innocent, despite the intense scrutiny these cases draw from foes of the death penalty. It would be a great boon for groups intent on eliminating the death penalty to find that an innocent person has been put to death, yet, even though they look diligently, they do not find this to happen. When you see someone saying how "these people have repeatedly been found innocent" or somesuch, they're talking about the fact that many people are found innocent during the multiple levels of review that each death penalty case goes through after the jury decides in the case. This is entirely different from people being executed and then found innocent.

The fact that DNA fingerprinting provides greater accuracy in determining the perpetrator of a crime decreases the possibility that an innocent person would be executed. Because of this type of evidence, it is less possible that a person duly convicted might be innocent. If no one was being found innocent on death row, etc. would we all automatically assume that no innocent person has been executed?

When a person is given a death sentence, the case goes through multiple levels of review. It is not merely that the jury in the case decides the fate of the person, many others review the case and determine if there is any doubt in the guilt of that person. Consequently, a death sentence is the least likely to be the result of error or caprice.

* - According to the Boston Globe. Also, if you go to the websites of the FBI, the Department of Justice, or the Bureau of Justice Statistics (part of the Department of Justice), you cannot find one instance of any mention of any person found innocent. The situation is the same at the Death Penalty Information Center. Even if you go to the website of critics of the death penalty, such as the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, where you would certainly expect to find such information in their "fact sheets" (because it would certainly boost their case), you can find no mention of anyone ever found innocent after being executed. For instance, one of their facts is that "twenty three (23) innocent people have been mistakenly executed this century." That is the truth, however, that's this century, which is not after the Supreme Court authorized the resumption of capital punishment. There were no multiple levels of review in 1908, when it was not an organized and structured process, and it could have just been some county sheriff in Alabama, with no review of the case. You would think they would use a fact a little more solid than that, if it existed.