WASHINGTON — More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.
There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations.
The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.
They found that those 873 exonerated defendants spent a total of more than 10,000 years in prison, an average of more than 11 years each. Nine of every 10 are men, and half are black.
DNA evidence led to exoneration in nearly one-third of the 416 homicides and in nearly two-thirds of the 305 sexual assaults.
Researchers estimate the total number of felony convictions in the United States is nearly a million a year.
The overall registry/list begins at the start of 1989. It gives an unprecedented view of the scope of the problem of wrongful convictions in the United States, and the figure of more than 2,000 exonerations “is a good start,” said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.
“We know there are many more that we haven’t found,” said University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, editor of the newly opened National Registry of Exonerations.
Counties such as San Bernardino in California and Bexar County in Texas are heavily populated yet seemingly have no exonerations, a circumstance that the academics say cannot possibly be correct.
Lost years for the innocent
Of the 873 exonerations studied in detail:
• The defendants spent a total of more than 10,000 years in prison.
• Nine of every 10 of the people are men, and half are black.
• Nearly half were homicide cases, including 101 death sentences.
• Forty-three percent involved errant eyewitness identification, and 24 percent involved false or misleading forensic evidence.
• Seven percent were drug, white-collar and other nonviolent crimes, 5 percent were robberies, and 5 percent were other types of violent crimes.
