come. The convict is led into the death chamber,  the witnesses are brought in, and the executioner  

checks the machine. It's time. The inmate is  allowed their last words, and the executioner  

presses the lever. The condemned is pronounced  dead, and everyone at the prison breathes a sigh  

of relief that justice was done. Someone paid  the price for the terrible crime they committed.

Or did they? Does the death penalty always get  it right? As the only penalty from which there's  

no reprieve once carried out, many people  believe the risk is too high. After all,  

someone who is wrongfully sent to prison can be  released and given payments to try to make up for  

the years they lost. When someone is wrongfully  executed, there's no way to make up for that.  

That's why the United States and many  other countries with a death penalty  

have lengthy appeals processes to  allow time for evidence to come out.  

Many times, it's saved lives - over a hundred  and fifty death row inmates have been exonerated.

But has an innocent person been executed? While  many cases are still being debated, there are many  

cases around the world where the executioner was  forced to admit that they got the wrong criminal.

One of the first famous cases of wrongful  executions happened in 1660 in Gloucester,  

England. A successful man named William Harrison  left his home to walk to a nearby village  

and didn't return home. One of his servants, John  Parry, was sent after him - but when Harrison's  

son went out looking for him, he found only Parry.  They soon found some of Harrison's clothing,  

slashed and covered in blood. No body was  ever found, and as the investigation began,  

John confessed that he and his mother and  brother had killed Harrison for his money.  

They denied everything, but John's  testimony was all that was needed.  

The three servants were put on  trial, pled guilty to lesser charges,  

and were then found guilty of murder. The  family was hung together on Broadway Hill.

There was just one problem  with the open-and-shut case.

It was 1662 when William Harrison stepped  off a ship arriving from Portugal. He had  

a wild story of having been abducted and  sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.  

His master eventually died and he ran away,  stowing away on a ship back to London.  

This miraculous return came to  be known as the Campden Wonder,  

a miracle - for everyone except the unfortunate  Parry family. But was Harrison's story true?  

Why did John Parry confess? Although historians  have cast doubt on Harrison's spectacular tale of  

his whereabouts, this bizarre wrongful execution  remains one of England's biggest mysteries.

But it would not be England's  final wrongful execution.

The year was 1949, and the Cameo Theater in  Liverpool was one of the city's top entertainment  

centers. That is, until it became the sight  of a brutal crime. Cinema manager Leonard  

Thomas and his deputy Bernard Caterall were  counting the day's earning when a masked man  

stepped into their office. He robbed them, then  fired and killed both men. As the staff arrived,  

the killer made his escape down the fire escape.  Two local men with a history of petty crime,  

Charles Connolly and George Kelly, were quickly  arrested. They claimed to have never met each  

other and produced alibis, but they were  charged nonetheless. Kelly, charged with  

being the shooter, was eventually convicted  after multiple trials and sentenced to death,  

while Connolly pled guilty to lesser  charges. He was executed in March 1950.

That was only the beginning of  the strange turns in this case.

Many of the witnesses who named Kelly as  the killer had their own criminal history,  

and presiding Judge Cassels showed consistent  bias throughout the trial for the prosecutions.  

More troubling, the police questioned  another local criminal, Donald Johnson,  

and didn't turn over the evidence to the  proper authorities at trial. Johnson not  

only knew more about the case than any of the  men arrested but admitted to being around the  

cinema at the time. He later confessed to lying  to the police about the case but died in 1988  

and his role in the shooting was never prosecuted.  It wasn't until 2003 when Kelly's conviction was  

overturned by the Court of Appeals, and he  was given a proper burial as an innocent man.

The next case was bungled so badly, it led to the  end of capital punishment in the United Kingdom.

Timothy Evans lived a quiet life in rural  Wales with his wife and young daughter.  

He had overcome illness as a child and worked  as a painter despite chronic pain in his foot  

and learning difficulties. He moved into an  apartment building with his family in 1948,  

but his marriage was full of fighting.  Many neighbors reported screaming from  

his apartment. So when his wife wound up dead  under mysterious circumstances, he was suspect  

#1. When he mentioned his wife had taken a  drug to have an abortion, which was illegal,  

that only made people more suite he was guilty.  Then came the horrifying discovery of the body  

of his baby daughter next to her. Evans was  quickly put on trial, and with the testimony of  

his neighbor John Christie, he was convicted.  He was executed in March, 1950 by hanging.

But three years later, the  case took a horrific turn.

When John Christie left his apartment  and a new neighbor moved in,  

multiple bodies were found hidden in a secret  room of the house. It was revealed that  

Christie was actually one of the worst serial  killers in Welsh history, and the Evans family  

were two more of his victims. Christie was  soon executed for the murder of his own wife,  

and with it, the Evans case attracted new  attention. Although Christie had previous  

convictions for assault, he was never seriously  looked at as a suspect in the initial killings.  

Evans was eventually pardoned in 1966, and  the outrage over the execution of this simple,  

troubled man led to capital punishment  in Great Britain being abolished in 1965.

One thing many victims of wrongful execution  have in common? They were victims of racism.

Mahmood Hussein Mattan was born in British  Somaliland in 1923, and worked as a merchant  

seaman until he settled in Wales. A man of Somali  descent in Wales in the early 20th century wasn't  

going to blend in, and the negative attention  Mahmood attracted only increased when he married  

a local Welsh woman, Laura Williams. They  endured harassment as an interracial couple  

and eventually split up. But Mr. Mattan's bad luck  was only beginning. When a local business owner,  

Lily Volpert, was robbed and murdered  in her store in 1962, a massive manhunt  

questioned all the men in the area. While they  didn't find any evidence in Mattan's home,  

a woman who had been at Volpert's store  later identified him as being in the  

store right before the murder. Although she  later contradicted her story, the prosecutors  

later produced a twelve-year-old girl who  claimed she had seen Mattan enter the shop.

The evidence was thin. That didn't matter.

Mattan was quickly convicted despite there being  no physical evidence linking him to the crime.  

His own attorney's closing speech was racist,  claiming Mattan was a “semi-civilized savage”.  

Mattan's appeals failed, and he was executed  less than two months after his conviction.  

After his death, both another man seen near the  shop and one of the witnesses were convicted of  

violent crimes that resembled Volpert's murder.  While Mattan's family attempted to appeal the  

conviction posthumously, the government decided  not to reopen the case. They did allow the  

family to move the body to a Cardiff cemetery in  1996. His headstone reads “Killed by Injustice”,  

and a later commission appointed by the government  found his conviction was flawed. In 1998,  

his family became the first family of a wrongfully  executed person to receive a cash settlement.

Mateen was far from the only racial minority  executed unjustly, as we head across the Atlantic.

The year was 1862, and the Dakota War was raging.  In the middle of the United States Civil War,  

another smaller war boiled over as Dakota natives  fought with the United States government over  

broken tariffs. Hundreds of Dakota soldiers were  captured and tried by military tribunals for their  

role in attacks on settlers. Ultimately, three  hundred and three men were sentenced to death,  

among them We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee. Also known  as Chaska, he was known for abducting Sarah  

Wakefield and her children, who he protected  from attacks. Many rumors spread that he and  

Sarah were lovers, but he was convicted  for murdering a pregnant woman in a raid.

Hope was in the wings, as Abraham Lincoln  was reportedly sympathetic to his case.

Lincoln was known for his liberal use of  the commutation power, and he reversed all  

but thirty-eight of the sentences for lack of  evidence. Chaska was one of them...but he was  

executed by General Henry Sibley anyway. Sibley  claimed he had simply never received the pardon,  

making Chaska's execution a tragic mistake. Or  was it? Many speculated that Chaska's relationship  

with Sarah Wakefield made him a target, and  the General wanted to make an example. Today,  

pressure from Native American activists for a  posthumous pardon for Chaska continues to grow.

In the 1800s, executions in the American west  were common. And it didn't matter who you were.

Chipita Rodriguez wasn't your typical convicted  murderer. A Mexican-American woman who ran a  

makeshift lodge for travelers, she was 63 when  she had her brush with the law. A trader named  

John Savage was found dead from ax wounds,  and she was accused of killing and robbing  

him. There was just one problem - the money she  was accused of taking was found on his body.  

She was indicted along with a man named Juan  Silvera, who many suspected was secretly her son.  

She refused to testify in her own  defense, maybe to protect Juan,  

and was convicted. The jury clearly had  their doubts, as they recommended life  

in prison. But Judge Benjamin Neal was a  hard-nosed man, and he ordered her hung.

But her execution would not  be the end of her story.

Rodriguez's last words as she was  executed were “No soy culpable”,  

or “I am not guilty”. Her execution became  part of American lore, as many in the area  

claimed to see her ghost wandering the  desert with a noose around her neck.  

Books, newspapers, and operas have been written  about her, casting her as a victim of racism  

who may have been trying to protect her  son. Although no formal review of the case  

ever happened, the Texas Legislature passed a  resolution condemning her execution in 1985.

No, there is no safety from wrongful convictions.  Not for the elderly - and not for the young.

Joe Arridy was only twenty-one when the full  force of the law came crashing down on him. His  

parents were immigrants from Syria who came  to America seeking work, and Joe was slow  

as a young boy. He had trouble speaking and  only attended one year of elementary school,  

and wound up leaving a residential home  for people with mental disabilities  

and becoming a train-hopper. No one knows if  he was in Pueblo, Colorado in August, 1936  

when horror came to the Drain family. Two  girls, Dorothy and Barbara, were viciously  

attacked in their bedroom by an unknown assailant.  Dorothy was sexually assaulted and died from her  

injuries. When Arridy was arrested in neighboring  Wyoming for vagrancy, Sheriff George Carrol was  

determined to catch a bigger fish. He interrogated  Arridy about the Drain case, and Joe confessed.

But did he even know what he was saying?

When Carroll called the Pueblo police chief, he  learned that they had another suspect in custody,  

Frank Aguilar. Aguilar confessed to the crime,  having worked for the Drain family and been fired  

before the attack. He said he never met Arridy -  but that didn't stop the authorities from charging  

them both with the killings. The only piece of  evidence they had against Arridy was his false  

confession, and doctors said that Arridy only  had the mind of a six-year-old. Both men were  

sentenced to death, and Arridy's attorney Gail  Ireland fought for years to save Arridy's life.  

Those on Colorado's death row stated that Arridy  was the happiest prisoner, as he likely didn't  

even know what was about to happen to him. He  played with a toy train until he was taken to the  

gas chamber. While it was too late to save his  life, he received a posthumous pardon in 2011.

Most wrongfully convicted people are bystanders or  

unrelated to the crime. But the  next may have been the victim.

By all accounts, Cameron Todd Willingham was a  normal Texas dad. He and his wife Stacy raised  

their three daughters - a toddler and twin babies  in Corsicana. But one day, Stacy went out to shop  

for Christmas presents, and things went terribly  wrong. A massive blaze ripped through the home,  

and only Cameron made it out. The three children  tragically burned to death. When police looked  

into the fire, they found evidence of arson,  claiming that a liquid accelerant had been  

used to start the blaze. They quickly charged  Willingham with setting the fire to cover up  

evidence of child abuse, but his wife denied  that he had ever abused the girls or her.

That didn't matter to prosecutors.

The state quickly assembled a bizarre array  of witnesses. A jailhouse informant claimed  

that Willingham had confessed while locked up  awaiting trial. A psychiatrist nicknamed “Dr.  

Death” for his testimony in death penalty cases  argued that Willingham's skull tattoo meant he  

was a sociopath. Two local women claimed that they  had urged Willingham to go back into the house to  

rescue his kids, but he refused. Willingham  was offered a plea deal for life in prison,  

but refused, and was convicted. He maintained  his innocence until his execution in 2004,  

but the investigation continued after his  death. Famous fire investigator Gerald Hurst  

examined the evidence and found no compelling  evidence of arson. Although Willingham's wife  

claimed years after his death that he confessed  to her, many people now believe there may have  

never been a crime at all, and Willingham  was executed for a tragic house fire.

While it was too late for these eight individuals,  

every wrongful conviction gains more attention to  the possibility of people being executed unjustly.  

The Innocence Project is one of many charities  using DNA evidence to exonerate people before  

their date with the executioner. Some have  been released after decades on death row.

For more on the most shocking executions ever,  

check out “50 Insane Execution and Death  Penalty Facts That Will Shock You”,  

and for how it's evolved, watch “The  Horrible History of the Death Penalty”.