Before Troy Davis: A History of Contested Death Penalty Cases

...Of course, every death penalty case comes wrapped in some degree of debate, given deep disagreement over whether the death penalty is ever moral. Here is a by-no-means-exhaustive list of some of the most controversial cases of the 20th and 21st centuries:

Sacco and Vanzetti: Italian Anarchists (1927)

Death penalty controversy is not a new phenomenon. Italian immigrants Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in 1927 after a highly contested series of trials over the shooting death of two men during a 1920 armed robbery. [The History of Human Aggression]

Sacco and Vanzetti were followers of Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, and anti-Italian sentiment almost certainly played a role in their execution, Radelet said. The accused men waged a then-unprecedented six-year legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court twice, and public figures (Albert Einstein among them) called for new trials. But even a confession to the murders by another man, ex-convict Celestino Madeiros, could not save Sacco and Vanzetti's lives. They died in the electric chair on Aug. 23, 1927. Later, several anarchist leaders spoke out to say that Sacco was guilty but Venzetti was not, though historians still debate whether either man really pulled the trigger.

The Scottsboro Boys: Race in Alabama (1931)

Based on the judgment of all-white juries, eight black teenage boys were sentenced to death for the rape of two white women on a freight train in 1931 (a ninth boy, only 12, was judged too young for the electric chair). The trials took place in just a day — with a lynch mob demanding the surrender of the teenagers outside the jail before the trials — and the only lawyers who would defend the accused included a retiree who hadn't tried a case in years and a Tennessee real estate lawyer unfamiliar with Alabama law.

The convictions led to demonstrations in the heavily black neighborhood of Harlem in New York City, and the case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, where the convictions were reversed because of the lack of an adequate defense. Amid enormous public interest, charges were dropped against four of the men. Three were re-sentenced to life in prison; a fourth, Clarence Norris, was re-sentenced to death, later reduced to life in prison. Gov. George Wallace pardoned Norris in 1976. To this day, the Scottsboro case is still shorthand in public dialogue for unfair, racially biased convictions and sentencing....