Death Row Stories

Two stepbrothers confess to the murder of an 11-year-old girl, but later claim their confession was coerced. After being convicted they spend 30 years in jail before potentially new evidence comes to light.

In 1995, Hank Skinner was sentenced to death for a New Year's Eve triple-homicide of his family. Skinner, discovered drunk, high, and covered in blood, claims he passed out on the couch at the time of the murders, with no recollection of the events. Five years later, students from the Northwestern University start to investigate the case, and discover that key physical evidence, including the murder weapon and a jacket likely worn by the assailant, were never tested for DNA. They also discover troubling evidence pointing to a possible alternate suspect.

When 19-year-old Stacey Stites' body is found half-naked by the side of the road, her fiancé, police officer Jimmy Fennell, is cleared as a suspect. DNA is found to match Rodney Reed, a local man suspected in other sexual assault cases and he is sentenced to death. A decade after the crime, Stites' former fiancé is imprisoned for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody. When new forensic evidence casts doubt on the timeline of the crime, evidence shows Stites' death may have occurred while she was at home.

A 4-year-old girl from Philadelphia is found murdered, her body placed in a TV box. Police find no suspects, and the case goes cold. Years later, they arrest a neighbor, Walter Ogrod, for the crime. When an author seeking to write about the death penalty comes across Walter's case, he finds an investigation filled with holes, and a perpetrator who appears mentally unable to have confessed to the crime. The writer discovers a jailhouse snitch network and publishes a two-part article in the Philadelphia City Paper to reveal these injustices. Meanwhile, Walter Ogrod remains on death row, fighting a system determined to keep him there.

Sabrina Butler, a 17-year old African American woman, arrives at a Mississippi hospital with her baby dead on arrival. Nurses and doctors suspect foul play, and Sabrina cannot give straight answers about what happened to her baby. Sabrina is charged with capital murder and sentenced to death. Several years later, death penalty expert Clive Stafford Smith uncovers a corrupt system in which Mississippi medical examiners steer autopsy results to buttress the claims of law enforcement. Clive is able to get Sabrina a re-trial and seek out justice.

A babysitter is found brutally murdered in Santa Ana, California, with five young children in the home left unscathed. The parents are quick to point to Kenneth Clair, a local transient who burglarized their home in the past. Clair is convicted of capital murder and sent to death row. But recent DNA analyses and allegations of corruption at the Orange County District Attorney's Office raise questions about the validity of this conviction. The DA's office denies the allegations and says the conviction should stand.

Clarence "Smitty" Smith, the leader of the notorious biker club The Outlaws, is accused of a quadruple homicide in Fort Lauderdale. He beats the rap for the homicides, but is sentenced to death for car bombing of a federal witness in New Orleans. On appeal, Smitty is exonerated from death row, proving his innocence beyond question. But the Feds aren't done with Smitty – under the RICO act, they charge Smitty with all the murders in Ft. Lauderdale and New Orleans again, and this time they win. Should a man in his 70's be left to die in federal prison after being charged twice for his crimes?

After a family of six is found brutally murdered in a rural Texas town, a perpetrator confesses to the crime. Police however, can't believe one man alone could murder six people, and Anthony Graves is named as an accomplice. Graves is sentenced to death, but maintains his innocence. His case is eventually taken up by a journalism professor who discovers a District Attorney engaged in misconduct who is intent on keeping a guiltless man in prison.