Another Wrongful Conviction on Death Row, Inmate Released
An unethical prosecutor and a fraudulent lab chemist put Curtis McCarty on death row in Oklahoma, not once, but three times. After 21 years in prison, he's now been exonerated:
The Innocence Project details the case and says:
“For anyone who believes the death penalty is being carried out appropriately in this country, and anyone who believes that prosecutors and government witnesses can always be relied on to pursue the truth, this case is a wake-up call,” said Peter Neufeld, Co-Director of the Innocence Project. “Three separate times, an innocent man was sentenced to die because of the actions of an unethical prosecutor and a fraudulent analyst.”
McCarty is the 201st person in the United States exonerated through DNA evidence – and the 15th of those 201 who has served time on death row. McCarty is the ninth person to be exonerated by DNA evidence in Oklahoma and the third to be exonerated from the state’s death row.
As for the prosecutor, it was Bob Macy of Oklahoma City.
Robert H. Macy, who was the Oklahoma County District Attorney for 21 years, prosecuted McCarty in both of his trials. Macy sent 73 people to death row – more than any other prosecutor in the nation – and 20 of them have been executed. Macy has said publicly that he believes executing an innocent person is a sacrifice worth making in order to keep the death penalty in the United States.
Macy committed misconduct in the manner that he prosecuted McCarty and presented the case to the jury. His misconduct was compounded when he relied on Joyce Gilchrist, a police lab analyst who falsified test results and hid or destroyed evidence in order to help secure McCarty’s convictions. Gilchrist was the lead forensic analyst in 23 cases that ended in death sentences (11 of the defendants in those cases have been executed).
“This is by far one of the worst cases of law enforcement misconduct in the history of the American criminal justice system,” said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. “Bob Macy has said that executing an innocent person is a risk worth taking – and he came very close to doing just that with Curtis McCarty.”
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