Page:Glossip v. Gross.pdf/53

 Cite as: 576 U. S. ____ (2015)

3

BREYER, J., dissenting

and other punishments (including life in prison). Woodson, 428 U. S., at 305 (plurality opinion). That “qualita­ tive difference” creates “a corresponding difference in the need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case.” Ibid. There is increasing evidence, however, that the death penalty as now applied lacks that requisite reliability. Cf. Kansas v. Marsh, 548 U. S. 163, 207–211 (2006) (Souter, J., dis­ senting) (DNA exonerations constitute “a new body of fact” when considering the constitutionality of capital punishment). For one thing, despite the difficulty of investigating the circumstances surrounding an execution for a crime that took place long ago, researchers have found convincing evidence that, in the past three decades, innocent people have been executed. See, e.g., Liebman, Fatal Injustice; Carlos DeLuna’s Execution Shows That a Faster, Cheaper Death Penalty is a Dangerous Idea, L. A. Times, June 1, 2012, p. A19 (describing results of a 4-year investigation, later published as The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution (2014), that led its authors to con­ clude that Carlos DeLuna, sentenced to death and executed in 1989, six years after his arrest in Texas for stabbing a single mother to death in a convenience store, was inno­ cent); Grann, Trial By Fire: Did Texas Execute An Inno­ cent Man? The New Yorker, Sept. 7, 2009, p. 42 (describ­ ing evidence that Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted, and ultimately executed in 2004, for the appar­ ently motiveless murder of his three children as the result of invalid scientific analysis of the scene of the house fire that killed his children). See also, e.g., Press Release: Gov. Ritter Grants Posthumous Pardon in Case Dating Back to 1930s, Jan. 7, 2011, p. 1 (Colorado Governor granted full and unconditional posthumous pardon to Joe Arridy, a man with an IQ of 46 who was executed in 1936, because, according to the Governor, “an overwhelming body of