Reply #70: well, maybe not in the US

[iverglas]

An additional risk, moreover, is that if the wrong person does get executed, the case cannot be revisited (which is why nobody has ever been exonerated post mortem) which means that the actual culprit can never be identified.

(A point I also raised earlier, of course.)


http://www.innocent.org.uk/cases/hhmattan/index.html

Mahmood Hussein Mattan was convicted on 24 July 1952 at Glamorganshire Summer Assizes, Swansea of the murder of Miss Lily Volpert in her shop in Cardiff on 6 March 1952. Leave to appeal was refused on 19 August 1952. Mr Mattan was hanged 2 weeks later at Cardiff Prison.

The CCRC referred the case to the Court of Appeal on 23 September 1997, and the conviction was quashed on 24 February 1998 when Lord Justice Rose, Mr Justice Holland and Mr Justice Penry-Davey ruled that the conviction was unsafe because the evidence of the main prosecution witness was unreliable.

Unfortunately, in that case, the quashing of the conviction came too late not just for the accused, but for any chance of identifying the real culprit. (Keeping in mind that the fact that a conviction is unsafe doesn't mean that the accused didn't do it, although that case seems pretty genuinely bad.)