WASHINGTON (AP) — 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, or database, 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 ever
compiled.
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 combined total of more than 10,000 years in prison, an
average of more than 11 years each. Nine out of 10 of them are men and half are
African-American.
Nearly half of the 873 exonerations were
homicide cases, including 101 death sentences. Over one-third of the cases were
sexual assaults.
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,” added University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, the 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.
The registry excludes at least 1,170
additional defendants. Their convictions were thrown out starting in 1995 amid
the periodic exposures of 13 major police scandals around the country. In all
the cases, police officers fabricated crimes, usually by planting drugs or guns
on innocent defendants.
Regarding the 1,170 additional defendants who
were left out of the registry, “we have only sketchy information about most of
these cases,” the report said. “Some of these group exonerations are well
known; most are comparatively obscure. We began to notice them by accident, as
a byproduct of searches for individual cases.”
In half of the 873 exonerations studied in
detail, the most common factor leading to false convictions was perjured
testimony or false accusations. Forty-three percent of the cases involved
mistaken eyewitness identification, and 24 percent of the cases involved false
or misleading forensic evidence.
In two out of three homicides, perjury or
false accusation was the most common factor leading to false conviction. In
four out of five sexual assaults, mistaken eyewitness identification was the
leading cause of false conviction.
Seven percent of the exonerations were drug,
white-collar and other nonviolent crimes, 5 percent were robberies and 5
percent were other types of violent crimes.
“It used to be that almost all the
exonerations we knew about were murder and rape cases. We’re finally beginning
to see beyond that. This is a sea change,” said Gross.
Exonerations often take place with no public
fanfare and the 106-page report that coincides with the opening of the registry
explains why.
On TV, an exoneration looks like a singular
victory for a criminal defense attorney, “but there’s usually someone to blame
for the underlying tragedy, often more than one person, and the common culprits
include defense lawyers as well as police officers, prosecutors and judges. In
many cases, everybody involved has egg on their face,” according to the report.
Despite a claim of wrongful conviction that
was widely publicized last week, a Texas convict executed two decades ago is
not in the database because he has not been officially exonerated. Carlos
deLuna was executed for the fatal stabbing of a Corpus Christi convenience
store clerk. A team headed by a Columbia University law professor just
published a 400-page report that contends DeLuna didn’t kill the clerk, Wanda
Jean Lopez.