Texas is not the only place where innocent people end up on death row and some are even executed as were Ruben Cantu, Cameron Willingham and Carlos De Luna. CNN has the story of an innocent woman on death row in Iraq.
Sitting on Iraq’s death row is a 25-year-old woman convicted in the slayings of three relatives. She says her husband carried out the killings and fled. She confessed to being an accomplice, she says, only after being tortured in police custody.
Despite lingering questions about the case, the fate of Samar Saed Abdullah remains the gallows.
“I am innocent,” she told CNN from inside the al-Kadhimiya Women’s Prison in Baghdad. “The judge did not hear me out. He refused to hear anything I have to say. He just sentenced me.” (Watch Abdullah cry as she tells her story )
According to Amnesty International, such claims are not uncommon in Iraq, which has the fourth-highest execution rate in the world.
Amnesty issued a report last month that concluded sentences in Iraq increasingly follow flawed trials and coerced confessions.
“In many cases, death sentences have been issued following proceedings which failed to meet international fair trial standards,” the report said. “This represents a profoundly retrograde step.”
Speaking of women on death row. Next month, Texas is scheduled to execute a woman named Cathy Henderson. Write Governor Perry asking him to stop the execution of Henderson.