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who had often seen him around the neighborhood where they all lived. Stephen Buckley, Cruz and Hernandez’s original co-defendant, who bears some resemblance to Brian Dugan, was also identified as having been near the crime scene by an eyewitness. Indeed, mistaken identification has been named as the leading cause of wrongful convictions nationwide.
    On the other hand, sometimes the road to death row in these cases had led along byways long recognized as dangerous to the truth. The risk that accomplices and jailhouse snitches will lie to win leniency in their own cases is traditionally acknowledged in jury instructions, which tell jurors, for example, that the testimony of such persons “must be considered with caution and great care.” Joseph Burrows, Verneal Jimerson, and Dennis Williams were all sent to death row by the bogus inventions of co-defendants.
    Whatever the particulars of these cases, though, the bottom line was the same. Being accused of a grisly murder was a far greater peril to an innocent person than I’d recognized years before.

6
CONVICTING THE INNOCENT
    U NDERLYING THE EXONERATIONS in Illinois’ death row cases were a few fundamental questions. How could experienced police officers and prosecutors be taken in by false evidence—or even assume a role in manufacturing it? And how could juries fail in their enshrined role of protecting against such abuses and actually buy in?
    Thinking about Alex’s case and studying the other exonerations in Illinois, I eventually recognized that there is a unique array of factors in death penalty cases that can lead to wrongful convictions. Prosecutors in capital cases have extraordinary leverage over the accused. Defendants who avoid the death penalty do so most often by pleading guilty. Inherent in capital punishment is the risk that an innocent person faced with the choice of living or dying might plead. Many others, of course, accept the peril and demand a trial. When they get it, the law requires removing from the jury any person who says he or she will refuse to impose a capital sentence. It is difficult to imagine what else the law might do other than banish those who will not adhere to its command, but studies have repeatedly asserted that the resulting jury pool is more conviction-prone.
    Yet at the end of the day, the factor that is the greatest snare for the innocent is the nature of the cases themselves. In Illinois, in the last twenty-five years, approximately one in every fifty convictions for first-degree murder has resulted in a capital sentence. Even in Wyoming, which has the highest death-sentencing rate in the country, fewer than 6 percent of homicides end up with a sentence of execution pronounced. That is consistent with the command of the U.S. Supreme Court, which has ruled that death may not be the automatic punishment for first-degree murder. In practice, capital punishment is reserved for “the worst of the worst,” that is, those crimes which most outrage the conscience of the community. Paradoxically, this makes for the capital system’s undoing, because it is these extreme and repellent crimes that provoke the highest emotions—anger, especially, even outrage—that in turn make rational deliberation problematic for investigators, prosecutors, judges, and juries.
    Under enormous pressure to solve these cases, police often become prisoners of their own initial hunches. A homicide investigation is not an academic inquiry allowing for even-handed consideration of every hypothesis. Instead, it’s conducted in an atmosphere where primitive fears about unknown, dangerous strangers imperil our sense of an orderly world. There is a strong emotional momentum to adopt any explanation. Cops often feel impelled to take the best lead and run with it.
    A few weeks before Jeanine’s murder, the Nicaricos had hired a Spanish-surnamed cleaning lady who turned out to have a son with a burglary record. He