MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE
IN POTENTIALLY CAPITAL CASES (1987)
by Hugo Adam Bedau and Michael L. Radelet

Excerpt from Appendix A: Catalogue of Defendants

LAMSON, DAVID (white). 1933. California. Lamson was convicted of first-degree murder for killing his wife and sentenced to death. On appeal, the conviction was reversed and a new trial ordered.1 In his book, We Who Are About to Die, Lamson (a graduate of Stanford University and an employee of Stanford University Press) explains that when he went to trial, he and his attorneys were confident his innocence would be established. “It never occurred to any of us that anything but an acquittal might result.”2 The conviction was based entirely on circumstantial evidence; no murder weapon, evidence of motive, or confession was introduced at trial. The state supreme court concluded in part: “Every statement of the defendant, capable of verification, tends to support his claims. It is true that he may be guilty, but the evidence thereof is no stronger than mere suspicion. It is better that a guilty man escape than to condemn to death one who may be innocent.”3 Lamson spent thirteen months on death row in San Quentin. The jury in a second trial was unable to agree on a verdict, as was the jury in a third trial. Shortly thereafter, the judge dismissed all charges on the recommendation of the prosecutor, who claimed that it was impossible to obtain a jury to convict the defendant.4 Thirty years later a journalist described Lamson as “[o]ne of the 20th century’s most distinguished victims of a capital error.”5

Footnotes

1. People v. Lamson, 1 Cal. 2d 648, 36 P.2d 361 (1934).
 
2. D. LAMSON, WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE: PRISON AS SEEN BY A CONDEMNED MAN at ix (1935).
 
3. Lamson, 1 Cal. 2d at 662, 36 P.2d at 367.
 
4. See generally N.Y. Times, Apr. 4, 1936, at 4, col. 4; id., Mar. 25, 1936, at 46, col. 5; id., May 15, 1935, at 44, col. 4.
 
5. Moskowitz, You Can’t Apologize to the Dead, INSIDE DETECTIVE, Dec. 1962, at 46, 70.