ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan has law experts available to discuss the death penalty. The 1,000th person in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 was executed. The experts say this milestone is a reminder that the criminal justice system must take steps to reduce the number of convictions of innocent people.

Kenneth Lee Boyd, 57, was executed by lethal injection at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, 11 years after he was sentenced for killing his wife and father-in-law.

Here are some of the U-M experts:

Phoebe Ellsworth, law and psychology professor, is an expert on public opinion and the death penalty, as well as jury behavior. “The American public is considerably more ambivalent about the death penalty than it was 10 years ago, probably due to increased awareness that the system is imperfect, and that there is a very real risk of sentencing innocent people to death. 

“The standard of proof in our democracy has always been that guilt should be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, not innocence.  No one should have to prove that he is definitely innocent in our system; no one should be executed unless the state has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty.”

She can be reached at ( 734) 763-1143. For additional information about Ellsworth, visit http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/public/experts/ExpDisplay.php?ExpID=221

Samuel Gross, law professor, is an expert on the death penalty, false convictions, racial profiling and eyewitness identification. Last year, he published a study that looked at 340 innocent people who were exonerated since 1989, and released after they had gone to prison for crimes they did not commit. Among the key findings:

• Exonerations from death row are about 25 times more likely than for other murder convictions, and more than 100 times more likely than for all felony prisoners. Some of that discrepancy is due to the greater care devoted to reviewing capital cases. The gap is so huge that it must also be true that false convictions are more likely for death sentences than for all murder cases, and much more likely than for felony convictions generally.

• Although 122 death row inmates have been exonerated and released since 1973, other innocent defendants must have been put to death. A system that makes that many mistakes in the first place is not likely to catch them all after the fact.  

• The tragedy of false capital convictions is not limited to those on death row. “In all likelihood, the great majority of innocent defendants who are convicted of capital murder are neither executed nor exonerated but sentenced to prison for life, and then forgotten,” he said.

Gross can be reached at (734) 764-1519.

Related Links:

• Samuel Gross

• http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/public/experts/ExpDisplay.php?ExpID=221Samuel Gross