National Registry of Exonerations

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The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the University of Michigan Law School that was co-founded in 2012 with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law to provide detailed information about known exonerations in the United States since 1989. There are presently 1,584 cases listed on the registry.[1] An additional 1,170 other cases were identified but are not included in the count because these were "group exonerations" made after 13 major police misconduct scandals came to light.[2]

Launched on May 21, 2012, with 891 exonerations listed, the National Registry has grown quickly, reaching 1,000 exonerations on October 26, 2012, with around five new cases being added each week. About two-thirds of those additions were past exonerations previously not listed, rather than new exonerations made.[3]

The editor of the registry is Michigan Law professor Samuel R. Gross, who with Michael Shaffer wrote the report Exonerations in the United States, 1989-2012.[4] According to Gross, "these cases merely point to a much larger number of tragedies that we do not know about."[5] The registry and report includes cases of defendants convicted of crimes that never occurred, cases involving false confessions, and cases involving innocent defendants who pleaded guilty. The new report reveals many more exonerations than previously found.[6]

The National Registry of Exonerations is the largest and most detailed compilation of exoneration data ever made.[6][7]

Data

Exonerations may be browsed and sorted by name of the exonerated individual, state, county, year convicted, age of the exonerated individual at the time of conviction, race of the exonerated individual, year exonerated, crime for which falsely convicted, whether DNA evidence was involved in the exoneration, and factors that contributed to the wrongful conviction.[8] The registry also indicates whether a co-defendant or a person who might have been charged as a codefendant gave a confession that also implicated the exoneree and whether the false conviction case involved "shaken baby syndrome" or child sex abuse hysteria.[8] The exoneration also includes a glossary of terms.[9]

For all exonerations listed in the original 873 cases identified, the most common were perjury or false accusation (51%), mistaken witness identification (43%), official misconduct (i.e., by police, prosecutors, or judges), false or misleading forensic evidence (24%) and false confession (16%). Inadequate legal defense also played a role in some cases of wrongful conviction.[8][10]

The exoneration data indicates that factors contributing to false convictions vary by crime. The largest contributor to false convictions for homicide is perjury, often by someone who claims to have witnessed the crime or participated in it, and false confessions.[6] In rape cases, the largest contributor is eyewitness misidentification, frequently by white victims who misidentify black defendants.[6] Witness mistakes are also present in the majority of false convictions for robbery, which has few exonerations because DNA evidence is rarely available in such cases.[6] The report also indicates that child sex abuse exonerations are almost all because it is later determined that no crime occurred.[6]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ National Registry of Exonerations (last visited April 12, 2015).
  2. ↑ Michael McLaughlin, National Registry of Exonerations: More Than 2,000 People Freed After Wrongful Convictions (May 22, 2012). Huffington Post; Michael Doyle, New national registry lists exonerations from wrongful convictions (May 21, 2012). McClatchy Newspapers.
  3. ↑ Exoneration list grew quickly to 1,000 (Oct. 30, 2012), UPI.
  4. ↑ Samuel R. Gross & Michael Shaffer, Exonerations in the United States, 1989-2012: Report by the National Registry of Exonerations m June 2012.
  5. ↑ Andrew Cohen, Wrongful Convictions: A New Exoneration Registry Tests Stubborn Judges (May 21, 2012). The Atlantic.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Hilary Hurd Anyaso, Registry Tallies Exonerations Since 1989 (May 21, 2012). Northwestern University.
  7. ↑ David G. Savage, Registry tallies over 2,000 wrongful convictions since 1989 (May 20, 2012). Los Angeles Times.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Browse the Registry, National Registry of Exonerations.
  9. ↑ Glossary, National Registry of Exonerations.
  10. ↑ Jorge Rivas, 50 Percent of Those Exonerated in National Registry are Black, Color Lines (May 22, 2012).

External links

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