How Common Are Wrongful Convictions?

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“It’s frightening how easy it is to convict an innocent person in this country. And it’s overwhelmingly difficult to release an innocent person.”

Seema Saifee, staff attorney at the Innocence Project

Since 1989 there have been 2,028 innocent people exonerated for crimes they did not commit. The average exoneree had served nearly 15 years in prison. 168 people were exonerated in 2016 alone. And the number of yearly exonerations keeps increasing. Within the next 2 decades, if nothing is changed on the way we convict people, we could surpass 1,000 exonerations per year.

Unfortunately the modern American criminal justice system does not work as our forefathers intended. As a free nation we now hold the world’s largest prison population. And America is the only modern democracy that still has capital punishment (death penalty). Considering 5 of the 151 exonerees in 2015 were death row inmates, it is a certainty that innocent people have been put to death under this broken system.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, currently there are over 2.3 million people incarcerated in local, state and federal prisons. A conservative estimate is that at least 5% are innocent which translates into 115,000 innocent people in our prison system right this moment. It very well could be 10%, almost a quarter million people. They did nothing wrong. They broke no law but are blamed, confined and deprived.

115,000 innocent people in prison? How can this happen?

Much too easily. There are many ways an innocent person gets convicted for a crime they did not commit. In the constitution you have a right to a fair trial by an unbiased jury and judge, and of adequate defense counsel. Rarely does that fair trial, as intended in our constitution, actually happen. Many people don’t have the financial means necessary to hire a good defense attorney who will take the time needed to fully investigate the case, to bring experts to testify on your behalf, and bring compelling arguments to bear. What ends up happening is that an overburdened and overworked public defender will take the case if it goes to trial, if you fight the charges levied against you. You’ll be going up against state attorneys, prosecutors with more than enough resources. In fact many innocent people will choose a plea deal, basically admitting to something they did not do, had no involvement with in order for reduced charges. The plea deal problem in our criminal justice system is wrong, but it’s just one of the many problems in the system.

Besides the plea deal problem, should you go to trial there are other major contributors to wrongful convictions including eyewitness misidentifications, false confessions, inadequate defense counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, police misconduct, misinterpretation of forensics, biased juries and biased judges.

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