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Page Number: 80.0

30 

GLOSSIP v. GROSS 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

death penalty’s constitutionality.

For one thing, delays have helped to make application of
the death penalty more reliable.  Recall the case of Henry
Lee  McCollum,  whom  DNA  evidence  exonerated  30  years 
after his conviction.  Katz & Eckholm, N. Y. Times, at A1. 
If McCollum had been executed earlier, he would not have 
lived  to  see  the  day  when  DNA  evidence  exonerated  him 
and implicated another man; that man is already serving 
a  life  sentence  for  a  rape  and  murder  that  he  committed 
just a few weeks after the murder McCollum was convicted 
of.  Ibid.  In  fact,  this  Court  had  earlier  denied  review 
of  McCollum’s  claim  over  the  public  dissent  of  only  one
Justice.  McCollum  v.  North  Carolina,  512  U. S.  1254 
(1994).  And  yet  a  full  20  years  after  the  Court  denied
review,  McCollum  was  exonerated  by  DNA  evidence. 
There  are  a  significant  number  of  similar  cases,  some  of 
which  I  have  discussed  earlier.  See  also  DPIC  Innocence 
List,  supra  (Nathson  Fields,  23  years;  Paul  House,  23
years;  Nicholas  Yarris,  21  years;  Anthony  Graves,  16
years; Damon Thibodeaux, 15 years; Ricky Jackson, Wiley 
Bridgeman,  and  Kwame  Ajamu,  all  exonerated  for  the 
same crime 39 years after their convictions). 

In  addition  to  those  who  are  exonerated  on  the  ground 
that  they  are  innocent,  there  are  other  individuals  whose
sentences  or  convictions  have  been  overturned  for  other 
reasons (as discussed above, state and federal courts found 
error  in  68%  of  the  capital  cases  they  reviewed  between
1973  and  1995).  See  Part  I,  supra.    In  many  of  these
cases,  a  court  will  have  found  that  the  individual  did  not 
merit  the  death  penalty  in  a  special  sense—namely,  he 
failed to receive all the procedural protections that the law 
requires for the death penalty’s application.  By eliminat­
ing  some  of  these  protections,  one  likely  could  reduce 
delay.  But  which  protections  should  we  eliminate? 
Should we eliminate the trial-related protections we have
established  for  capital  defendants:  that  they  be  able  to