Over 2,000 wrongful convictions tallied since 1989

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By David G. Savage,
Washington Bureau

May 20, 2012, 11:46 p.m.
WASHINGTON — More than 2,000 people have been freed from prison since 1989 after they were found to have been wrongly convicted of serious crimes, according to a new National Registry of Exonerations compiled by University of Michigan Law School and Northwestern University.

Its sponsors say it is by far the largest database of such cases, and they hope it will help reveal why the criminal justice system sometimes misfires, prosecuting and convicting the innocent.

"The more we learn about false convictions, the better we'll be at preventing them," said Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan law professor.

The registry covers the period since DNA came into common use and revealed, to the surprise of many prosecutors and judges, that a significant number of convicted rapists and murderers were innocent. The Innocence Project in New York says DNA alone has freed 289 prisoners since 1989.

Criminal law experts have been studying the growing number of exonerations. Some cases have involved police corruption or witnesses who recanted. Experts have also pointed to faulty eyewitness testimony and lying witnesses as common problems.

Beyond that, a surprising number of cases involved suspects who confessed to crimes they didn't commit.

"Nobody had an inkling of the serious problem of false confessions until we had this data," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. Under persistent and prolonged questioning by investigators, some suspects confessed to crimes such as rape, even though DNA later revealed they were not the perpetrators.

Among the states, Illinois has the most exonerations listed in the new registry, and among counties, Cook County and Chicago led the way, followed by Dallas and Los Angeles. However, the sponsors of the new registry do not contend that their data permits strong comparisons across counties or states because only about 900 of the cases were examined in detail by jurisdiction.

"It's clear that the exonerations we found are the tip of the iceberg," Gross said.

For example, several counties in California with more than 1 million residents, including San Bernardino and Alameda, listed no exonerations. By contrast, Cook County had 78 and Dallas County 36.

MORE:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-dna-revolution-20120521,0,1446543.story

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2012-05/70049973.jpg

Bennie Starks of Chicago spent 20 years in prison after being convicted of rape. DNA evidence pointed to another man, and charges against Starks were dropped May 15. (Chris Walker, Chicago Tribune / December 4, 2008)

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I've mentioned this before... we need to get rid of the 'adverarial' system of justice and the job of DA.

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@Lustig Andrei,

So...uh...nobody else is at all concerned about these statistics? Modern American justice strikes again!

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It is stories such as this that changed my sentiments about capital punishment, as I have posted here before.

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@edgarblythe,

Yeah, basically,me too. Until our system of justice evolves to the point where a wrongful conviction is literally impossible, capital punishment should not even be considred as an option. It's irreversible. You can't pay reparations to the wrongly convicted once that sentence has been carried out. And I don't see that sort of absolute certainty as even a remote possibility in the forseeable future.

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@Lustig Andrei,

****!

You know, having been in a position to observe the Oz criminal justice system intimately for a few years, my bet was on a lot more people being wrongly acquitted than were wrongfully convicted.

This has me wondering if I was seriously wrong.

We don't imprison at the rate you guys do, and we don't kill people, and we don't have the three strikes thing, but I can't see any reason that our actual rate of wrongful conviction should be any lower than that of the US.

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@dlowan,

I don't know enough about the criminal justice system in Oz to make a meaningful comment, Deb, but one of the major probelms here in the USA is that in a great many jurisdictions the reputation -- and sometimes the job itself -- of a prosecuting attorney literally depends on his/her success in obtaining convictions. That being the case, it's inevitable that every possible effort will be made to put the accused in the worst possible light and to actually (sometimes) sweep bits and pieces of evidence under the rug, anything at all that might raise a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. After a while any meaningful concept of "justice" goes out the window and a court case becomes a gladiatorial contest between two jousting attorneys.

It's a long-standing joke here that a jury consists of 12 sworn citizens whose job it is to determine which side has the best lawyer.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Ah...I forgot...you elect your chief prosecutors. That's a huge difference, I think. And not in a good way.

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There was a fairly lengthy item on "All Things Considered" on NPR tonight on this study. They emphasized that this is the first time we've actually got a statistically valid documented study of the number of wrongful convictions. Almost everything prior to this was largely anecdotal and based, in part, on intelligent guesswork.

The radio reporter also made the point that the study probably under-reports the number of wrongful convictions because it counts only those that have actually been overturned. We can guess that if this many were wrong, there are probably a fewmore wrongly imprisoned people doing time simply because they can't prove that they didn't do it.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Quote:

I don't know enough about the criminal justice system in Oz to make a meaningful comment, Deb, but one of the major probelms here in the USA is that in a great many jurisdictions the reputation -- and sometimes the job itself -- of a prosecuting attorney literally depends on his/her success in obtaining convictions....

That's the basic problem right there. We need to get rid of the "adversarial" system of justice and adopt the system which the French and a few other European nations use which is termed "inquisitorial", and in which the common motive of all government workers involved is to determine facts.

The number you're citing is laughable, i.e. 2000 or so since the mid 80s, the real number has to be many times greater than that.

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In theory at least I've got nothing against hanging somebody like Manson or Dennis Rader. Here's the problem: I'd want several big changes to the system before I could feel good about capital punishment any more.

1. The criterion of guilt should be "beyond any doubt, whatsoever". "Beyond a reasonable doubt" doesn't cut it for capital punishment; you can't unhang somebody. This requirement would probably limit capital punishment to mass murderers.

2. The person in question would have to represent a continuing danger should he ever get loose again. Certainly somebody who goes on ordering crimes from inside a prison cell would qualify. Society basically has no other way to protect itself at that point.

3. I'd want to get rid of the present adversarial system of justice and replace it with a European style inquisitorial system in which the common incentive for all parties was the determination of facts. NOBODY should ever have any sort of a career/money incentive for sending people to prison. It's bad enough that people sit around in prison because their lawyer simply wasn't as good as some prosecutor on a given day; you sure as hell don't want people dying for that reason.

4. I'd want there to be no societal benefit to keeping the person alive. Cases in which this criteria would prevent hanging somebody would include "Son of Sam" who we probably should want to study more than hang, or Timothy McVeigh who clearly knew more than the public ever was allowed to hear.

They expected DNA testing to eliminate the prime suspect in felony cases in something like one or two percent of cases and many people were in states of shock when that number came back more like 33 or 35%. That translates into some fabulous number of people sitting around in prisons for stuff they don't know anything at all about since the prime suspect in a felony case usually goes to prison. Moreover, in a state like Texas which executes a hundred people a year or whatever it is, that translates into innocent people being executed on a fairly regular basis.

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Over 2,000 wrongful convictions tallied since 1989

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