Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf
Page Number: 57

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

7 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

who  is  not  willing  to  impose  the  death  penalty.  See 
Rozelle,  The  Principled  Executioner:  Capital  Juries’  Bias 
and the Benefits of True Bifurcation, 38 Ariz. S. L. J. 769, 
772–793,  807  (2006)  (summarizing  research  and  conclud­
ing that “[f]or over fifty years, empirical investigation has 
demonstrated that death qualification skews juries toward
guilt and death”); Note, Mandatory Voir Dire Questions in
Capital Cases: A Potential Solution to the Biases of Death 
Qualification,  10  Roger  Williams  Univ.  L. Rev.  211,  214–
223 (2004) (similar).

Another  is  the  more  general  problem  of  flawed  forensic
testimony.  See Garrett, supra, at 7.  The Federal Bureau 
of  Investigation  (FBI),  for  example,  recently  found  that 
flawed  microscopic  hair  analysis  was  used  in  33  of  35
capital  cases  under  review;  9  of  the  33  had  already  been
executed.  FBI,  National  Press  Releases,  FBI  Testimony 
on Microscopic Hair Analysis Contained Errors in at Least 
90  Percent  of  Cases  in  Ongoing  Review,  Apr.  20,  2015.
See also Hsu, FBI Admits Errors at Trials: False Matches 
on  Crime-Scene  Hair,  Washington  Post,  Apr.  19,  2015, 
p. A1 (in the District of Columbia, which does not have the 
death  penalty,  five  of  seven  defendants  in  cases  with
flawed hair analysis testimony were eventually exonerated).
In light of these and other factors, researchers estimate
that  about  4%  of  those  sentenced  to  death  are  actually 
innocent.  See  Gross,  O’Brien,  Hu,  &  Kennedy,  Rate  of 
False  Conviction  of  Criminal  Defendants  Who  Are  Sen­
tenced to Death, 111 Proceeding of the National Academy
of  Sciences  7230  (2014)  (full-scale  study  of  all  death  sen­
tences  from  1973  through  2004  estimating  that  4.1%  of 
those  sentenced  to  death  are  actually  innocent);  Risinger, 
Innocents  Convicted:  An  Empirically  Justified  Factual
Wrongful Conviction Rate, 97 J. Crim. L. & C. 761 (2007)
(examination of DNA exonerations in death penalty cases 
for  murder-rapes  between  1982  and  1989  suggesting  an
analogous rate of between 3.3% and 5%).