“In the last three decades, 1,004 people have been executed in the United States, and there is critical DNA evidence in many of those cases that has never been tested. While nobody can say with certainty how may of these cases there are, nobody honestly doubts their existence or the seriousness of the questions they raise. Today we got just one answer, and one man can not speak for the correctness of the verdicts in a thousand other capital cases. Given the extraordinary number of post-conviction exonerations and the thousands more cleared by DNA testing while awaiting trial, questions and doubts about the fairness of our justice system are pervasive. Nobody can be satisfied about the correctness of one thousand based on the correctness of one.”

Since 1989, according to the Innocence Project, 172 people have been exonerated based on DNA evidence. Of those, 14 spent time on death row – including some who were within hours of being executed.

Amnesty International has released this statement:

Governor Mark Warner demonstrated tremendous courage by recognizing that states, courts, and juries can make mistakes. When and if they do, public officials have a responsibility to seek out the truth and erase any doubts that might tarnish the credibility of our judicial system. The death penalty, which is not synonymous with justice, is riddled with potentially fatal flaws.

Despite the outcome of these tests, the antiquated practice of state-sanctioned executions should be abolished based on its appalling record of human error, prosecutorial misconduct, racial bias, mistakes made by crime labs and unreliable witness testimony. These failures played a role in sending 122 men to death row over the last 33 years who were ultimately freed based on wrongful convictions--men who would, in all likelihood, have shared Coleman's fate had exculpatory evidence been discovered too late to save them.