The Last Meals Of Innocent Men
An emotional new ad campaign from Amnesty International asks its viewers to stomach a hard truth — images of the last meals of wrongly executed American prisoners.
Meal 1: Ruben Cantu (Texas) was charged with capital murder at 17 years old for shooting a man during a robbery. The one witness to this crime admitted later on that he was pressured by police to identify Cantu as the criminal. He told the police twice that Cantu was not the shooter. However, Cantu was still executed in 1993.
Meal 2: Leo Jones (Florida) was charged with the murder of a police officer in Florida. Although he said that said he was coerced into confession after hours of interrogation. The police officer and the detective involved in his case, were forced out of uniform for ethical violations a few years after his’ conviction.
Jones was executed in 1998.
Meal 3: Claude Howard Jones (Texas) was sentenced to death in 1989 for shooting and killing Texas liquor store owner. However, the recent DNA tests on the strand of hair that was used as the only physical evidence against him was proved not to belong to him.
“Knowing that these DNA results support his innocence means so much to me, my son in the military and the rest of my family. I hope these results will serve as a wake-up call to everyone that serious problems exist in the criminal justice system that must be fixed if our society is to continue using the death penalty,” - Jones’ son, Duane Jones
Jones was executed in 2000.
Meal 4: David Spence (Texas) was charged and sentenced to execution for the murder of three Texas teenagers. There was no physical evidence against him and both the homicide detective and police lieutenant that were on his case did not believe Spence to be the criminal. The prosecution solely relied on the testimony of other prison inmates in their case against Spence,
He was executed in 1997.
Meal 5: Cameron Willingham (Texas) was convicted of murdering his three children in a 1991 house fire . Four national arson experts have concluded that the original investigation in the case was flawed, while an independent investigation into the case concluded that the prosecution centered its argument on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific studies.
Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004
End capital punishment.
