Titanic : The Conspiracy Theory

One hundred years ago, the ship that couldn’t sink sank. It’s the centennial anniversary of RMS Titanic’s ill-fated end on its debut transatlantic crossing.

On April 10, 1912, the Titanic, largest ship afloat, left Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York City. The White Star Line had spared no expense in assuring her luxury. A legend even before she sailed, her passengers were a mixture of the world’s wealthiest basking in the elegance of first class accommodations and immigrants packed into steerage.

She was touted as the safest ship ever built, so safe that she carried only 20 lifeboats – enough to provide accommodation for only half her 2,200 passengers and crew. This discrepancy rested on the belief that since the ship’s construction made her “unsinkable,” her lifeboats were necessary only to rescue survivors of other sinking ships. Additionally, lifeboats took up valuable deck space.

At the time of her construction, the Titanic was the largest ship ever built. She was nearly 900 feet long, stood 25 stories high, and weighed an incredible 46,000 tons. With turn-of-the-century design and technology, including sixteen major watertight compartments in her lower section that could easily be sealed off in the event of a punctured hull, the Titanic was deemed an unsinkable ship. According to her builders, even in the worst possible accident at sea, two ships colliding, the Titanic would stay afloat for two to three days, which would provide enough time for nearby ships to help.

 

 On April 14, 1912, however, the Titanic sideswiped a massive iceberg and sank in less than three hours. Damaging nearly 300 feet of the ship’s hull, the collision allowed water to flood six of her sixteen major watertight compartments. She was on her maiden voyage to the United States, carrying more than 2200 passengers and crew, when she foundered. Only 705 of those aboard the Titanic ever reached their destination. After what seemed like a minor collision with an iceberg, the largest ship ever built sank in a fraction of the time estimated for her worst possible accident at sea.

Two government investigations (U.S.A. & Britain) conducted immediately after the disaster agreed it was the iceberg, not any weakness in the ship itself, that caused the Titanic to sink. Both inquiries concluded the vessel had gone to the bottom intact. Blame for the incident fell on the ship’s deceased captain, E. J. Smith, who was condemned for racing at 22 knots through a known ice field in the dark waters off the coast of Newfoundland. The case of the Titanic was considered closed.



 Hundreds upon hundreds of books. Two dozen movies. Plays, radio serials, poems, paintings, two Broadway musicals, comics, video games and a symphony were made to tell the story of Titanic. But is this the real true story of the sinking of the Titanic. Could the sinking of “unsinkable” Titanic be an inside job of some evil, sinister people ? Of course it is extremely hard to believe,  but let’s look and examine a little deeper and a little further.
 Shrouded in mystery and speculation, the sinking of the Titanic has many strange coincidences and strange occurrences surrounding it. One of the theories surrounding the Titanic sinking involves the highly debated Federal Reserve. Who shot JFK? Was 9-11 staged? Did aliens really crash at Roswell? All interesting theories that some would say absolutely yes to, while others would scoff and say, no way! Well, now you can add one more to the list of great mysteries with the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.
When we think of events that have transpired in history over the last one hundred to two hundred years, there are certain events that stand out as ones of great horror, great surprise and great sadness. Of the many that come to mind the most devastating have been the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City and the sinking of the Titanic.
 What was the real story behind the sinking of the Titanic? The book ‘The Secret Terrorists’ printed by Truth Triumphant Ministries and reprinted by Tree of Life Resources places blame squarely on the Roman Catholic Order known as the Jesuits. ‘The greatest tragedies in the last 200 years can be traced to the Jesuits.’ We see how the Jesuits  planned and executed the sinking of the Titanic, and we’ll show you how they did it.
 Since the early 1830’s, the United States didn’t have a central bank. The Jesuits desperately wanted another central bank in the country so that they would have a bottomless reservoir from which to draw money for their many wars and other hideous schemes around the world.
 Founded in 1540, the Society of Jesus grew rapidly within the Catholic Church. They were confessors to the ruling families of Europe. They defend the Pope and Catholicism around the world in nearly every country. In 1773, Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuits. In 1814, Pope Pius VII responded to pressure and restored the Society. There are Jesuit colleges and ministries today. They are a very influential organization. Jesuits are dedicated to furthering Catholicism and the power of the Pope. Yet…there is a secret, negative side to this organization called ‘the Society of Jesus.’ For hundreds of years they carried out religious killings. They were the men in dark cloaks who carried daggers. (Were they the religious CIA for their time?)
In 1910, seven men met on Jekyll Island just off the coast of Georgia to plan the Federal Reserve Bank. Paul Wanourg, a German investment banker, spearheaded the movement, wanting to model the new United States Federal System after the German system.

Jekyll Island

Nelson Aldrich and Frank Valderclip represented the Rockefeller financial empire. Henry Davidson, Charles Norton and Benjamin Strong represented J.P. Morgan. Paul Warberg represented the Rothschilds Banking dynasty of Europe. The Rothschilds were the banking agents for the Jesuits and hold ‘the key to the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church.’
The Morgan gang, the Rothschild gang and the Rockefeller gang were fierce competitors yet entered joint ventures. They established the national banking cartel called the Federal Reserve System….according to G. Edward Griffin in ‘The Creature From Jekyll Island (American Opinion Publishing P. 209). A review of this book stated: ‘It tells a story of how bankers have lured politicians with easy money and end up in control of most of the world.’

Paul Warburg

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.”
(Paul Warburg, drafter of the Federal Reserve Act)

Benjamin Strong

J.P. Morgan

Sen. Nelson Aldrich

Henry P. Davidson & Charles D. Norton

Many believe that the Rockefeller, Morgan, and Rothschilds families were affiliated with the Illuminati/Jesuits, and favored a central bank to allocate all funds in one place so that it would be easy to take funds out and use money to support the ideal of a new world order. Astor, Strauss, and Guggenheim opposed the idea, realizing that the centralization of banks would result in the exploitation of the bank by the government. They wanted banking power to lie in many branches individually owned, and not in one central location. Regardless, the result of this meeting was the Aldrich Bill, named after Senator Nelson Aldrich, a proponent of the bill and chair of the commission on the new Federal Reserve Bank. The purpose of the bill was to “provide an elastic currency” (1932 Wells) that would expand and contract in correlation with the needs of the public. Some theory states that the Jesuits were passionate and believed in the doctrine “the ends justify the means,” and would do anything to promote the new Federal Reserve Bank-even if it meant eliminating the obstacles in their way. This is where the Titanic entered the picture.

Rothschild’s Agents Who Started The Federal Reserve In 1913

 

This was the ‘maiden’ voyage of the greatest ship ever built. The ‘unsinkable’ campaign assured passengers of comfortable safety. Many Irish, French and Italian Catholics were on board. Protestants from Belfast were also encouraged to immigrate to the United States on the Titanic. These were ‘expendable’ people; for the most part. But, the real reason for the ship’s destruction was a game between the super rich whereby Guggenheim-Strauss-Astor could be eliminated. ‘They had to be destroyed by a means so preposterous that no one would suspect they were murdered, and no one would suspect the Jesuits.’

Isidor Straus

Benjamin Guggenheim

John Jacob Astor IV

The Titanic was built out of vanity and human ingenuity-attempting to make the biggest, best, and first of it’s kind. Titanic was meant to be a first class luxury ship for the millionaire elite as well as to hold as much cargo and steerage as possible. The Titanic’s maiden voyage was to begin in Ireland and end in New York. Benjamin Guggenheim, Isa Strauss, and Jacob Astor, were all passengers on the ship. These three men were most likely the most wealthy people of their time. Thusly, their opinion mattered greatly in matters of government and economics.These three were valiant opposers to the idea of a Federal Reserve Bank.

The Captain of the Titanic was Edward Smith. He was a Jesuit and worked for J.P. Morgan. Anyone could be a Jesuit and their identity not be known. >From National Geographic ‘The Secrets of the Titanic,’ (1986):When the ship departed southern England, on board was Francis Browne. He was the most powerful Jesuit in all of Ireland and the ‘Jesuit Master of Edward Smith.’ ‘Here is Jesuit treachery at its finest. The provincial Father Francis Browne boards the Titanic, photographs the victims, most assuredly briefs the Captain concerning his oath as a Jesuit, and the following morning bids him farewell…’ Eric J. Phelps, Vatican Assassins Halcon Unified Services. P. 247.

Father Francis Browne

Captain Smith believed this high-ranking ‘Jesuit General’ was God. Browne instructed him on what to do in the North Atlantic waters. ‘Edward Smith was given orders to sink the Titanic and that’s exactly what he did.’ According to Jesuit secret philosophy: The innocent can be massacred for the greater good; the ends justifies the means.

Captain Smith had been traveling the North Atlantic for 26 years. He was the ‘world’s most experienced master’ in these cold waters. The Captain knew all along that his ship was built for the enemies of the Jesuits. Its purpose was always to be a ‘deathship’ and sink on its first voyage. Captain Smith also knew exactly where the icebergs were. Under secret orders, he propelled the Titanic full speed at 22 knots on a moonless night and through a huge ice field 80 square miles in area! He had been ‘given orders from his God in the Vatican, and nothing would turn him from his course.’

Around 9.40 p.m. more ice warnings were received but these were not passed on to the officers. A great number of private telegrams requiring transmission had accumulated during the day, and the wireless operators were busy all evening dealing with these. In the general confusion of private wireless traffic, the ice warnings were largely ignored. In fact, the wireless operator who accepted the last warning was extremely irritated at the interruption. But clearly, the officers too did not have enough experience in dealing with icebergs and contented themselves with the information coming from the crow’s nest. However, the lookout did not even have a pair of binoculars – these had already been misplaced in Southampton.

 Captain Smith’s actions in his last hours were not those of a strong leader. He seemed as if he was wrestling with his conscience. Should he be the brave sea captain or obey his master and sink the ship?

There were purposely not enough lifeboats. Many of the lifeboats only had a few passengers of women and children during the emergency. White distress flares were jettisoned. Passing ships thought those aboard the Titanic were having a party. The distress flares should have been red. These examples were not because of an arrogant crew who believed the Titanic was unsinkable. These shortcomings were planned.

Those richest of men, who opposed the Federal Reserve System, were killed along with the middle and lower classes. John Jacob Astor’s wife was rescued. Molly Brown was also saved. The sinking of the Titanic was possibly the greatest disaster of the 20th Century outside of the World Wars. According to ‘The Secret Terrorists,’ the cause of this tragedy was the Jesuit Order of the Roman Catholic Church.

The unsinkable ship, the floating palace was created to be a tomb for the wealthy, who opposed the Federal Reserve System. On April 14th (the same date in history as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln) of 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg and all opposition to the Federal Reserve was eliminated. In December of 1913, the Federal Reserve System came into being in the United States. Eight months later, the Jesuits had sufficient funding through the Federal Reserve Bank to begin World War I.‘ Notice the F.R.S. was established soon after the disaster of the Titanic.

The rich have always created unnecessary wars where the poor have to fight and die. The pages of ‘The Secret Terrorists’ do not specifically name the Templars, Freemasons or Illuminati. But these Secret Societies are related and do control: The banks; the money system; the oil companies; corporations; governments; the politicians; the military; the police; the law and judicial system; the churches; the schools; the media, etc., etc…

The rich and powerful have always ruled the world. The elite make the news; they create the great, international events.

IT IS NOT INCONCEIVABLE THAT WE HAVE HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT THE FAMOUS VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC BECAUSE IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST PERFECT CRIMES EVER COMMITTED!

There is no record in history of an association whose organization has stood for three hundred years unchanged and unaltered by all the assaults of men and time, and which has exercised such an immense influence over the destinies of mankind… ‘The ends justify the means,’ is his favorite maxim; and as his only end, as we have shown, is the order, at its bidding the Jesuit is ready to commit any crime whatsoever. – G.B. Nicolini, The History of the Jesuits, Henry G. Bohn.

Let us remember the oath that every person takes to become a part of the Jesuit Order:

I should regard myself as a dead body, without will or intelligence, as a little crucifix which is turned about unresistingly at the will of him who holds it as a staff in the hands of an old man, who uses it as he requires it, and as it suits him best. – R.W. Thompson, The Footprints of the Jesuits, Hunt and Eaton.

When a person takes the Jesuit Oath, he is bound to his master until the day he dies.

Edward Smith became a man without will or intelligence. He would commit any crime the Order wanted him to commit. Edward Smith had been required for martyrdom. Aboard the Titanic that night, Edward Smith knew his duty. He was under oath. The ship had been built for the enemies of the Jesuits.

After three days (3) at sea, the Titanic was propelled full speed ahead, twenty-two(22) knots, on a moonless dark night through a gigantic ice field nearly eighty square miles in area. Edward Smith did this despite at least eight telegrams warning him to be more cautious because he was going too fast.Question? What is the number of Skull and Bones? 322.

Did Edward Smith need more caution? No, he had traveled those waters for twenty-six years. He knew there were icebergs in that area. But eight warnings didn’t stop this man who was under the Jesuit oath, and under orders to destroy the Titanic.

An iceberg, presumed to be the one that was struck by the RMS Titanic, is pictured from the deck of the cable ship Mackay-Bennett on April 15, 1912.

Survivors of the sinking of the RMS Titanic approach the RMS Carpathia in this April 15, 1912 photo

Survivors of the sinking of the RMS Titanic rest on the deck of the RMS Carpathia on April 15, 1912

Survivors of the sinking of the RMS Titanic are interviewed by reporters as they come off the RMS Carpathia in New York on April 18, 1912.

Benjamin Guggenheim with his wife

The funeral procession of John Jacob Astor IV, who died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic, enters Trinity Church Cemetery in upper Manhattan in this May 1912 photo.

The Survival - TRUE STORY

On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force flight 571 crashed in the heart of South America’s Andes Mountains, beginning one of the most harrowing survival ordeals in history. The flight carried members of an amateur Uruguayan rugby team, the Old Christians, along with some of their friends and family.

The plane, a twin turboprop Fairchild FH-227 belonging to the Uruguayan air force, left Montevideo for Santiago on Oct. 12, on a route that would take it over the highest mountain range in the southern hemisphere. Aviators as far back as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who flew the Andes as a mail pilot in the late 1920s, knew the hazards of navigation in the region. Orientation could be difficult, owing to the volatile weather conditions.
In fact, the weather that day was vile. To wait things out, the plane made an overnight stop in Mendoza, Argentina. The weather was still bad the next morning, with heavy clouds over the mountains, when the plane took off. It flew south, parallel to the range, looking for Planchon, a low mountain pass, because the cloud cover made it too dangerous to attempt flying over any higher part of the Andes.
The cloud cover didn’t lift at Planchon, forcing the pilots to rely on dead reckoning. That led to miscalculations that resulted in both wings being clipped and a sudden crash landing (or making a “controlled flight into terrain,” in aviation parlance) in the mountains at about 12,000 feet.



Unbeknown to the pilot, the plane had been off course before it crashed, so he was transmitting inaccurate position reports that would later hamper rescuers.
Twelve people were killed outright, including everyone in the cockpit. By the next morning, five more had died of their injuries, leaving 28 survivors to await rescue. Lacking cold-weather clothing and adequate medical supplies, they were nevertheless confident that rescue would be a matter of days, if not hours.
They were wrong.
Although search parties were dispatched by Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, they had only a vague idea of where the plane went down. To make matters worse, the fuselage was painted white, causing it to blend into the snow-covered mountain and making it almost impossible to see from the air.
The official search was called off after eight days.leaving 27 survivors to endure extreme cold, altitude, harsh weather conditions and starvation, 11,800 feet up in one of the most remote locations on Earth with little hope of rescue. Lacking any natural food sources, the group eventually resorted to eating human flesh to stay alive.Among the debris in the wreckage, the survivors had found a small transistor radio and managed to hear a report saying that their would-be rescuers had given up hope. It was a low point and might have signaled the end if not for Gustavo Nicolich, who told the others (whether he really believed it or not) that they would simply save themselves.
The fuselage was now serving as a makeshift shelter, the dead having been removed, so those who remained were sheltered from the worst of the weather. Crude sun glasses were fashioned from the cockpit sun visors to help prevent snow blindness. Splints and braces to hold broken bones in place were improvised from additional wreckage. But they couldn’t jury-rig food.
There were some chocolate bars, airline snacks and several bottles of wine on board. They didn’t last long, however, and the specter of starvation loomed. Faced with that reality, the survivors, after much soul searching, agreed to cannibalize the dead in order to buy more time. The decision was all the more agonizing, because the survivors would be acting against their strong Roman Catholic faith. In the end, everyone agreed to it.
The fact that they were by now literally starving probably helped.
Catastrophe struck again Oct. 29, when an avalanche partially buried the fuselage and killed nine more people. After that, the realization set in that waiting for rescue was futile. Another boy died from his injuries.
After 60 days stranded in the Andes, two of the survivors, Fernando “Nando” Parrado and Roberto Canessa, (the third trekker having returned to the fuselage) managed to get below the snow line.set out from the crash site to find a way out of the mountains and to seek rescue. It was decided that the three strongest survivors would attempt the dangerous trek out of the Andes in search of help.
Twelve days after setting out and a trek of nearly 40 miles through harsh mountain terrain, the pair reached civilization in Chile where they found some Chilean horsemen who relayed the message that there were still survivors in the mountains.
The final rescue, undertaken by helicopter crews, began 72 days after the crash. By Dec. 23, the final 16 survivors from the original group of 45 had been saved. The story has since been retold in books, film and, more recently, interviews with some survivors.





Sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/22/newsid_3717000/3717502.stm

Bali Nine Executions: Andrew Chan’s Final Moment of Love

SMILING with pure joy, this is the moment Andrew Chan wed his sweetheart Febyanti Herewila. 
 
With just one day to live, in front of a close-knit group of family and friends inside Nusakambangan, Chan slipped a ring onto the finger of his sweetheart.

Despite knowing they would have only precious hours as a married couple, they wanted to marry before his life was taken.

Final request ... Andrew Chan at his wedding to Febyanti Herewila a day before he was executed.
Salvation Army Minister David Soper, who spent the last hours with Chan before he was executed, had married them.
The event had been filmed and photographed by officials from the Attorney-General’s and prosecutions office who have spent the past three days documenting the condemned nine people, including Chan and Sukumaran.
The Chan and Sukumaran families were not allowed to take any last photographs of their loved ones and were dismayed to learn that the images of the very private wedding had been leaked to Indonesia’s TV One network.
So too were a series of photographs of the men’s last days.
The couple’s wedding — a rare moment of joy on the bleakest of days — was announced by his older brother Michael.
“It is a tough time but it is a happy time at the same time,” Michael said of the moment of rare happiness.
Speaking after the wedding, Michael added: “Andrew had a special day today, Feby and Andrew have had a bit of a celebration this evening and it was celebrated with family and close friends”.
“It was an enjoyable moment; they’re married.”
The couple were required to get permission from prison authorities in order to marry in the jail.
Chan and Feby, a fellow pastor, were engaged in February in Bali’s Kerobokan prison, after Chan learned his clemency had been rejected and he was set to die.


 At the time, Feby told The Daily Telegraph: “Andrew is one of the strongest, kindest people I have ever met.”
Feby said her love for Chan was not borne out of any kind of pity.
“I love him for who he is. And I see what he does for other people and that makes me love him more,” Feby said.
“If you ask me why do I love him, it’s because he also has weaknesses as well but he also has a lot of good things about him. I accept him the way he is. I am also very proud of him.”
Indonesia’s Attorney-General HM Prasetyo seemed to indicate a lack of empathy for Chan’s plight.
He said he agreed to fulfil Chan’s request to wed before his execution, even though he thought it was a joke.
“There was a request from Andrew Chan, I thought it as a joke. He has been isolated, so I think it was a joke but we will fulfill it,” he said.

Unfair Executions

Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment, the "death penalty." Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by opponents of capital punishment, while proponents suggest that the argument of innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of death penalty.

 

A number of people are claimed to have been innocent victims of the death penalty. Newly available DNA evidence has allowed the exoneration and release of more than 17 death row inmates since 1992 in the United States, but DNA evidence is available in only a fraction of capital cases. Others have been released on the basis of weak cases against them, sometimes involving prosecutorial misconduct; resulting in acquittal at retrial, charges dropped, or innocence-based pardons. The Death Penalty Information Center (U.S.) has published a list of 10 inmates "executed but possibly innocent". At least 39 executions are claimed to have been carried out in the U.S. in the face of evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt.

 

In the UK, reviews prompted by the Criminal Cases Review Commission have resulted in one pardon and three exonerations for people executed between 1950 and 1953 (when the execution rate in England and Wales averaged 17 per year), with compensation being paid.

 

Colin Campbell Ross was hanged in Melbourne in 1922 for the murder of 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke the previous year in what became known as the Gun Alley Murder. The case was re-examined in the 1990s using modern techniques and Ross was eventually pardoned in 2008.

People's Republic of China

 

Weiqing An (Chinese: 魏清安, ?–1984, 23 years old) was a Chinese citizen who was executed for the rape of Kun Liu, a woman who had disappeared. The execution was carried out on 3 May 1984 by the Intermediate People's court. In the next month, Tian Yuxiu (田玉修) was arrested and admitted that he had committed the rape. Three years later, Wei was officially declared innocent.

 

Teng Xingshan (Chinese: 滕兴善, ?–1989) was a Chinese citizen who was executed for supposedly having raped, robbed and murdered Shi Xiaorong (石小荣), a woman who had disappeared. An old man found a dismembered body, and incompetent police forensics claimed to have matched the body to the photo of the missing Shi Xiaorong. The execution was carried out on 28 January 1989 by the Huaihua Intermediate People's court. In 1993, the previously missing woman returned to the village, saying she had been kidnapped to Shandong. The absolute innocence of the wrongfully executed Teng was not admitted until 2005.

 

Nie Shubin (Chinese: 聂树斌, 1974–1995) was a Chinese citizen who was executed for the rape and murder of Kang Juhua (康菊花), a woman in her thirties. The execution was carried out on April 27, 1995 by the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People's court. In 2005, ten years after the execution, Wang Shujin (Chinese: 王书金) admitted to the police that, in fact, he had committed the murder.

 

Qoγsiletu (Mongolian:qoγsiletu, Chinese:呼格吉勒图, 1977-1996) was an Inner Mongolian who was executed for the rape and murder of a young girl on June 10, 1996. On December 5, 2006, ten years after the execution, Zhao Zhihong (Chinese: 赵志红) wrote the Petition of my Death Penalty admitting that, in fact, he had committed the crime.

 

Jiang Guoqing (Chinese: 江國慶, 1975–1997) was a Taiwanese soldier who was executed by a military tribunal on August 13, 1997 for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl. On January 28, 2011, over 13 years after the execution, Xu Rongzhou (Chinese: 許榮洲) admitted to the prosecutor that he had been responsible for the crime.

 

In 1660, in a series of events known as the Campden Wonder, an Englishman named William Harrison disappeared after going on a walk, near the village of Charingworth, in Gloucestershire. Some of his clothing was found slashed and bloody on the side of a local road. Investigators interrogated Harrison’s servant, John Perry, who eventually confessed that his mother and his brother had killed Harrison for money. Perry, his mother, and his brother were hanged. Two years later, Harrison reappeared, telling the incredibly unlikely tale that he had been abducted by three horsemen and sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire. Though his tale was implausible, he indubitably had not been murdered by the Perry family.

Timothy Evans was tried and executed in 1950 for the murder of his wife and infant daughter. An official inquiry conducted 16 years later determined that it was Evans's fellow tenant, serial killer John Reginald Halliday Christie, who was responsible for the murder. Christie also admitted to the murder of Evans's wife, as well as five other women and his own wife. Christie may have murdered other women, judging by evidence found in his possession at the time of his arrest, but it was never pursued by the police. Evans was posthumously pardoned in 1966. The case had prompted the abolition of capital punishment in the UK in 1965.

Mahmood Hussein Mattan was executed in 1952 for the murder of Lily Volpert. In 1998 the Court of Appeal decided that the original case was, in the words of Lord Justice Rose, "demonstrably flawed". The family were awarded £725,000 compensation, to be shared equally among Mattan's wife and three children. The compensation was the first award to a family for a person wrongfully hanged.
Derek Bentley was a mentally challenged young man who was executed in 1953. He was convicted of the murder of a police officer during an attempted robbery, despite the facts that it was his accomplice who fired the gun and that Bentley was already under arrest at the time of the shooting. The accomplice who actually fired the fatal shot could not be executed due to his young age.

 

University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross led a team of experts in the law and in statistics that estimated the likely number of unjust convictions. The study determined that at least 4% of people on death row were and are innocent. The research was peer reviewed and the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published it, Gross has no doubt that some innocent people have been executed.

 

Statistics likely understate the actual problem of wrongful convictions because once an execution has occurred there is often insufficient motivation and finance to keep a case open, and it becomes unlikely at that point that the miscarriage of justice will ever be exposed. In the case of Joseph Roger O'Dell III, executed in Virginia in 1997 for a rape and murder, a prosecuting attorney argued in court in 1998 that if posthumous DNA results exonerated O'Dell, "it would be shouted from the rooftops that ... Virginia executed an innocent man." The state prevailed, and the evidence was destroyed.

 

Chipita Rodriguez was hanged in San Patricio County, Texas in 1863 for murdering a horse trader, and 122 years later, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution exonerating her.

 

Thomas and Meeks Griffin were executed in 1915 for the murder of a man involved in an interracial affair two years previously but were pardoned 94 years after execution. It is thought that they were arrested and charged because they were viewed as wealthy enough to hire competent legal counsel and get an acquittal.

 

Joe Arridy (April 15, 1915 – January 6, 1939) was a mentally disabled American man executed for rape and murder and posthumously granted a pardon. Arridy was sentenced to death for the murder and rape of a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Pueblo, Colorado. He confessed to murdering the girl and assaulting her sister. Due to the sensational nature of the crime precautions were taken to keep him from being hanged by vigilante justice. His sentence was executed after multiple stays on January 6, 1939, in the Colorado gas chamber in the state penitentiary in Canon City, Colorado. Arridy was the first Colorado prisoner posthumously pardoned in January 2011 by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, a former district attorney, after research had shown that Arridy was very likely not in Pueblo when the crime happened and had been coerced into confessing. Among other things, Arridy had an IQ of 46, which was equal to the mental age of a 6-year-old. He did not even understand that he was going to be executed, and played with a toy train that the warden, Warden Roy Best, had given to him as a present. A man named Frank Aguilar had been executed in 1937 in the Colorado gas chamber for the same crime for which Arridy ended up also being executed. Arridy's posthumous pardon in 2011 was the first such pardon in Colorado history. A press release from the governor's office stated, "[A]n overwhelming body of evidence indicates the 23-year-old Arridy was innocent, including false and coerced confessions, the likelihood that Arridy was not in Pueblo at the time of the killing, and an admission of guilt by someone else." The governor also pointed to Arridy's intellectual disabilities. The governor said, “Granting a posthumous pardon is an extraordinary remedy. But the tragic conviction of Mr. Arridy and his subsequent execution on Jan. 6, 1939, merit such relief based on the great likelihood that Mr. Arridy was, in fact, innocent of the crime for which he was executed, and his severe mental disability at the time of his trial and execution."

 

George Stinney, a 12-year old black boy, was electrocuted in South Carolina in 1944 for the murder of two white girls, aged 7 and 11. He was the youngest person executed in the United States. More than 70 years later, a judge threw out the conviction, calling it a "great injustice."

 

Carlos DeLuna was executed in Texas in December 1989. Subsequent investigations cast strong doubt upon DeLuna's guilt for the murder of which he had been convicted.

 

Jesse Tafero was convicted of murder and executed via electric chair in May 1990 in the state of Florida for the murders of two Florida Highway Patrol officers. The conviction of a co-defendant was overturned in 1992 after a recreation of the crime scene indicated a third person had committed the murders.

 

Johnny Garrett of Texas was executed in February 1992 for allegedly raping and murdering a nun. In March 2004 cold-case DNA testing identified Leoncio Rueda as the rapist and murderer of another elderly victim killed four months earlier. Immediately following the nun's murder, prosecutors and police were certain the two cases were committed by the same assailant. The flawed case is explored in a 2008 documentary entitled The Last Word.

 

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in February 2004 for murdering his three young children by arson at the family home in Corsicana, Texas. Nationally known fire investigator Gerald Hurst reviewed the case documents, including the trial transcriptions and an hour-long videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene, and said in December 2004 that "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire." In 2010, the Innocence Project filed a lawsuit against the State of Texas, seeking a judgment of "official oppression".

 

In 2015, the Justice Department and the FBI formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an FBI forensic squad overstated forensic hair matches for two decades before the year 2000. 26 out of 28 forensic examiners overstated evidence of forensic hair matches in 268 trials reviewed, and 95% of the overstatements favored the prosecution. Those cases involve 32 cases in which defendants were sentenced to death.