08 APRIL 2015
America, the Land of the Wronged on Death Row

She has spent 23 years in the death row ward for a crime that she steadfastly maintained she had not committed. Last week the Arizona Supreme Court validated the dismissal of the Debra Milke death penalty, which was decided by a Court of Appeals in 2013, and dropped all charges against her for the murder of her four-year-old son.

 The idea behind the Supreme Court’s decision was that “scandalous prosecutorial and police misconduct had taken place”, mainly that of a detective and key prosecution witness Armando Saldate, who claimed that the divorced woman hired two killers to murder her four-year-old son allegedly for an insurance payout.

 Saldate testified that the woman, who claimed from the start to be innocent, had confessed the murder to him. On December 2, 1989, Milke agreed that the man with whom she currently lived take her son to a mall to see Santa Clause. Instead, he drove Christopher out of the city with a friend and murdered him. 

The two men confessed and were convicted to life imprisonment. The same sentence was inflicted on Milke, despite the fact that no evidence confirmed Saldate’s allegations and no recorded or written confession had been disclosed to court; simultaneously, the fact that the detective had lied under oath several times in the past had been withheld.

 According to DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center), this is not the only case: “The Arizona prosecutors are accused of mistrial in 50% of the cases that end up in death row”.

America, the Land of the Wronged on Death Row

She has spent 23 years in the death row ward for a crime that she steadfastly maintained she had not committed. Last week the Arizona Supreme Court validated the dismissal of the Debra Milke death penalty, which was decided by a Court of Appeals in 2013, and dropped all charges against her for the murder of her four-year-old son.

 The idea behind the Supreme Court’s decision was that “scandalous prosecutorial and police misconduct had taken place”, mainly that of a detective and key prosecution witness Armando Saldate, who claimed that the divorced woman hired two killers to murder her four-year-old son allegedly for an insurance payout.

 Saldate testified that the woman, who claimed from the start to be innocent, had confessed the murder to him. On December 2, 1989, Milke agreed that the man with whom she currently lived take her son to a mall to see Santa Clause. Instead, he drove Christopher out of the city with a friend and murdered him. 

The two men confessed and were convicted to life imprisonment. The same sentence was inflicted on Milke, despite the fact that no evidence confirmed Saldate’s allegations and no recorded or written confession had been disclosed to court; simultaneously, the fact that the detective had lied under oath several times in the past had been withheld.

 According to DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center), this is not the only case: “The Arizona prosecutors are accused of mistrial in 50% of the cases that end up in death row”.

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