Using the death penalty as a way out.

In the US, death row inmates are entitled to state-funded counsel only for their first appeal. Once they’ve lost that, they’re on their own. But being sentenced to death, as opposed to mere life imprisonment, has advantages. Lawyers opposed to the death penalty take action; the press takes notice. Foreign governments come, finally, to the defence of their citizens. A recent study found that those on death row were nine times more likely to be exonerated than those given prison terms for similar crimes, which confirmed what some convicts had already worked out for themselves. In 1986, Joe Amrine was convicted of murder in Missouri, and at the penalty phase of his trial decided to do everything he could to get the death penalty, but not because he wanted to die. He told National Public Radio:

I only had one option. And the only option I had was to make sure I received the death sentence. And I came to the conclusion that night just between me and the guys that was in what they call the unit with me. We all talked about it. And they all came to the same thing I said, which was there was too many guys in prison who had life and fifty years without parole, or life without parole, who might be innocent or whatever but they are stuck in prison because they don’t have a lawyer and they can’t get nobody’s attention.
So I figured if I end up getting life in prison without the possibility of parole, I’m stuck. Any legal work that we did on my case, I’ve had to do it myself. Or any publicity I’m going to get, where am I going to get it from? I don’t have a death sentence. So what if a guy got life and fifty years? We hear about them every day.
  So when the penalty phase came and he put me on that witness stand, I had made my mind up that I’m going to think of every bad act I’ve ever done as far back as I can remember. Every bad act by my sisters and brothers, my father, my mother, my neighbours. Everything bad I could think to tell them. Everything bad I could think that I could tell them I did while I was in prison, I told it. Because I wanted to make sure I received the death sentence. Because I figured if I received the death sentence, I’ll have a lawyer. And I might be able to get some publicity. And I might be able to overturn this wrong conviction I have.

Amrine was sentenced to death, and then as he’d predicted, a lawyer offered to represent him for free. A film was made about his life, and eventually he was exonerated and released