Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf
Page Number: 53

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

3 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

and  other  punishments  (including  life  in  prison).    Wood-
son,  428  U. S.,  at  305  (plurality  opinion).    That  “qualita­
tive  difference”  creates  “a  corresponding  difference  in  the 
need for reliability in the determination that death is the 
appropriate punishment in a specific case.”  Ibid.  There is 
increasing  evidence,  however,  that  the  death  penalty  as
now applied lacks that requisite reliability.  Cf. Kansas v. 
Marsh,  548  U. S.  163,  207–211  (2006)  (Souter,  J.,  dis­
senting)  (DNA  exonerations  constitute  “a  new  body  of 
fact”  when  considering  the  constitutionality  of  capital 
punishment).

For one thing, despite the difficulty of investigating the
circumstances  surrounding  an  execution  for  a  crime  that
took  place  long  ago,  researchers  have  found  convincing
evidence  that,  in  the  past  three  decades,  innocent  people 
have  been  executed.  See,  e.g.,  Liebman,  Fatal  Injustice;
Carlos DeLuna’s Execution Shows That a Faster, Cheaper 
Death  Penalty  is  a  Dangerous  Idea,  L. A.  Times,  June  1,
2012,  p.  A19  (describing  results  of  a  4-year  investigation,
later  published  as  The  Wrong  Carlos:  Anatomy  of  a
Wrongful  Execution  (2014),  that  led  its  authors  to  con­
clude that Carlos DeLuna, sentenced to death and executed 
in  1989,  six  years  after  his  arrest  in  Texas  for  stabbing
a single mother to death in a convenience store, was inno­
cent);  Grann,  Trial  By  Fire:  Did  Texas  Execute  An  Inno­
cent  Man?  The  New  Yorker,  Sept.  7,  2009,  p. 42  (describ­
ing  evidence  that  Cameron  Todd  Willingham  was 
convicted, and ultimately executed in 2004, for the appar­
ently motiveless murder of his three children as the result
of invalid scientific analysis of the scene of the house fire 
that killed his children).  See also, e.g., Press Release: Gov. 
Ritter Grants Posthumous Pardon in Case Dating Back to
1930s,  Jan.  7,  2011,  p.  1  (Colorado  Governor  granted  full 
and  unconditional  posthumous  pardon  to  Joe  Arridy,  a
man with an IQ of 46 who was executed in 1936, because, 
according  to  the  Governor,  “an  overwhelming  body  of