U.S. authorities have executed at least 21 “likely innocents,” mostly African Americans and Latinos, since the modern death penalty began in 1973, a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said Wednesday.
More than half of the cases, 11 were of racial and ethnic minorities “wrongly executed” and in 16, 76% of the total, the victim was white, detailed the report ‘Fatal flaws: Innocence, race and wrongful convictions’, which warns that “there could be others” innocent.
U.S. has executed 21 “probably innocent” inmates
Among them, the ACLU cites the example of Carlos DeLuna, a Latino who Texas executed in 1989 for misidentification, as he was convicted of killing a gas station worker in Corpus Christi, where the perpetrator was actually a man named Carlos Hernandez.
He also points to the 1998 execution of African-American Leo Jones in Florida, where an all-white jury convicted him, based on a “coerced confession,” of murdering a white police officer.
In addition, the justice system has exonerated at least 200 people sentenced to capital punishment who were actually innocent, more than half of whom, 108, were black, as African-Americans are seven times more likely to face the wrong penalty.
Of these, Glynn Simmons, who served 48 years in prison, more than any other person wrongly sentenced to death, and who was released only in 2023 after being sentenced for the murder of Carolyn Sue Rogers in Oklahoma, stands out.
The main factor in exonerations is the discovery of false testimony, which applies to 93.8% of Latinos and 70.7% of African-Americans, the research detailed.
Other factors include prosecutor and police misconduct, witnesses who identify the wrong people, unreliable expert witnesses, and juries that are not diverse.
“Each wrongful conviction reveals not only an individual failure, but the patterns of systematic injustice enmeshed in the death penalty. The death penalty was built on racism,” stated Megan Byrne, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project.
The report comes as the United States accumulates 43 executions of inmates this 2025, up 72% from the previous year.
The growth of the death penalty has been driven by Florida, which accumulates more than a third of those executed nationally, with 16, more than any other state, and in July broke its annual record, with nine.
Filed under: Probably innocent inmates executed in the U.S.
With information from EFE
