I think I've read a headline about someone who's been executed by the USA being found innocent half a year later on amnesty.org ... I was looking for something specific so I didn't take my time to read the article :/ but you might want to have a look at this article:
(beware: long text)
http://web.amnesty.o...ENGAMR510691998
Quote
[...]
Innocent and on death row: how does it happen?
While there are a multitude of factors contributing to mistaken death sentences in the USA, a deadly pattern emerges from the cases of individuals who were later exonerated. These recurring factors include the inadequate performance of defence attorneys and misconduct by prosecuting authorities eager to gain a conviction at any cost. Juries often rely on false evidence, including the perjured testimony of jail-house informants who bargain for leniency in return for their incriminating statements.
It is standard practice for US prosecutors to offer various forms of leniency to suspects and co-defendants in exchange for testimony used to incriminate other individuals. In many capital trials, prosecutors have built entire cases around the testimony of inmates claiming that the defendant "confessed" to the crime in their presence while they were imprisoned together.
[...]
Far too often, police officers have fabricated evidence and coerced confessions in their zeal to solve a high-profile case. Gary Nelson was falsely condemned for the rape and murder of a six-year-old girl in Georgia. After nearly a decade of diligent investigation, his volunteer lawyers proved that the district attorney had suppressed evidence of Nelson's innocence, that a forensic expert had presented false testimony and that investigators had lied under oath in a deliberate effort to conceal the weakness of their case against Nelson.
Other legal officials then often compound these types of injustices by refusing to acknowledge the possibility of an innocent defendant being condemned. Georgia Attorney General Michael Bowers has gone on record to state that there are no innocent prisoners on death row. "There is rarely any question about the guilt of these people, virtually none. That is a myth...these guys on death row are the pits," Bowers said in a newspaper interview. When asked specifically about Ellis Wayne Felker, a Georgia death row inmate with a credible claim of innocence who faced imminent execution, Bowers replied, "I've talked to the cops who investigated him, and I asked them: 'Guys, is there any doubt about his guilt?' And they told me, 'Bullshit'." Since 1976, four prisoners have been released from Georgia's death row following their complete exoneration.
[...]
Other defendants are the victims of guilt by association, falsely accused because of their prior criminal record or wrongly implicated by the actual perpetrator of the crime. In several cases, the police appear to have knowingly targeted an innocent person simply because of their inability to find any valid suspect to arrest.
[...]
Conclusion
For more than two decades judges and legislators in the USA have struggled with - and failed to resolve - the central paradox of the death penalty: how to impose an irreversible punishment fairly and accurately, while ensuring that the sentence is carried out without delay. There is clear and convincing evidence that this attempt to balance fairness and finality has now been abandoned, sacrificed for the sake of political expediency.
Some supporters of the death penalty have argued that the potential execution of innocent people is a justifiable risk, because of the purported benefits which the death penalty confers on society. This is a falsehood. There is no credible evidence to support the notion that the death penalty possesses any unique value in deterring criminal behaviour or that it brings any net societal benefits in its wake. Indeed, there is considerable data indicating the contrary: that executions have a brutalizing effect on US society as a whole and that the death penalty is corroding the workings of the US criminal justice system. The irrefutable fact that guiltless defendants risk execution only amplifies these negative effects.
More than 3,400 individuals are already under sentence of death in the USA and the range of offences resulting in death sentences is expanding. An increasingly draconian political climate and a deteriorating system of legal protections compound the risk of fatal error. What was already a crisis situation has worsened lately, due to a series of legislative and judicial measures which have the sole aim of reducing the time between conviction and execution. Many of the 75 death row inmates released in recent years on grounds of innocence would undoubtedly have been executed had these measures been implemented earlier.
Many innocent defendants confronting a death sentence in the USA must traverse a legal minefield of official misconduct, shoddy legal representation and impassable procedural obstacles. Far more than a few innocent lives are at risk: fundamental safeguards which protect the rights and liberty of all people in the USA are being systematically dismantled, in order to hasten a brutal, perilous and ultimately futile punishment.
[...]
well, this is an extremely shortened version of the full text, I definitly recommend reading it completely...
...releasing someone from prison and giving him a little money (2 million from state pockets ... they've got lots more...) might be ok ... but you can't undo killing someone. I believe I'm right when I call the US government killers...
, Please 
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