As Many as 20 Thousand Innocent People in Prison for Life or On Death Row
Before DNA testing proved otherwise, almost everyone in America believed that our justice system rarely convicted the innocent. A recent study revealed that at least 8% and as many as 15%, yeah that's right 15%, of those convicted of rape are innocent. That is, as many as 1 out of 7 simply did not commit the crime (1).
Now why, you may ask, is the study of those convicted of rape significant in regard to those convicted of murder? Because in cases of sexual assault there is nearly a 100% chance that DNA is most likely to be recovered and thus available to help exonerate the innocent. Sadly, in the vast majority of non-sexual assault cases there is practically zero DNA evidence left at the scene.
What that means is that if DNA were available in most murder cases, we certainly would be exonerating thousands of innocent people convicted of murder.
I know what some of my readers will say: "Oh Bernie, get out of town! - You are simply making projections - what about proven exonerations, what is that number?"
Well, according to The National Registry of Exonerations (a project of the University of Michigan Law School) they have cataloged between 30 to 58 judicial exonerations for homicide every year since 2000. So that's hundreds of exonerations and if DNA were available it would be thousands. So yeah, our justice system convicts the innocent in huge numbers - certainly not rarely.
And lest some of you believe that these poor innocents were convicted because of some unlucky mistakes, let me inform you that the great majority of wrongful convictions for murder in the US are the result of police or prosecutorial misconduct (2).
As criminal defense attorney Karren Kenney writes: "If the general public was truly aware of the extent of how many people are wrongfully convicted each year, including wrongful jury verdicts and people that should not have pled guilty to begin with, maybe efforts would finally be made to address this flaw in the system."
ENDNOTES
(1):
The Washington Post, 28 Sept 2012,
Louisiana death-row inmate Damon Thibodeaux exonerated with DNA evidenceresearchers examining biological evidence from hundreds of Virginia rape convictions between 1973 and 1987 determined that new DNA testing appeared to exonerate convicted defendants in 8 percent to 15 percent of cases.
Applied against the approximately 140,000 prisoners on death row or serving life sentences in the United States, the findings suggest that many thousands of innocent individuals could be in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.
(2):
The Christian Science Monitor, Exonerations climb in US, as prosecutors, police probe wrongful convictions
During the past 25 years, almost 60 percent of the wrongful convictions for homicide in the US are associated with official misconduct, according to data from the report. Moreover, 17 percent of those exonerated originally pleaded guilty. In most cases, the defendant had accepted a plea bargain for a reduced sentence. In other incidents, the exonerated convict had been a victim of coercive interrogation techniques.
