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

Excerpt from Appendix A: Catalogue of Defendants

WAN, ZIAN SUNG (Asian). 1919. District of Columbia. Wan was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The conviction was reversed on appeal because his coerced confession was improperly admitted at trial.1 Juries in two later trials refused to reconvict, and the indictment was dropped. Wan, a native of China, was released after seven years in prison. “[T]he review exercised by the Supreme Court in this case is seldom assumed by that Court. But for this unusual intervention Wan would have been executed . . . . ”2

Footnotes

1. Wan v. United States, 266 U.S. 1 (1924).
 
2. F. FRANKFURTER, supra note 761, at 109. See generally id. at 108-09; N.Y. Times, June 17, 1926, at 3, col. 4.