Mistake?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/26/execution.mistake.ap/index.html

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- To the very end, convicted killer Larry Griffin shouted his innocence to the world -- through court filings, in pleas to the governor and to nearly any reporter willing to listen.

None of it helped. Griffin, strapped to a white gurney, was executed by injection.

Now, 12 years later, St. Louis' chief prosecutor will soon release a report offering an opinion on whether Missouri put an innocent man to death.

The report, two years in the making, has no legal weight but could have a powerful effect on the nation's death penalty debate. Nearly 1,100 people have been executed in the United States in the modern era that began with Gary Gilmore's death by firing squad in Utah in 1977, and not one has been proved innocent after the fact.