As the popularity of TV shows such as “Making a Murderer” suggests, public interest in criminal exonerations has hit an all-time high. That’s likely in part a result of the rising number of convicts who have been cleared of wrongdoing in recent years.
According to a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations, 2015 saw 149 exonerations, a record. Those exonerees had served an average of 14-and-a-half years in prison. Fifty-eight of the cases involved homicide and 47 involved drugs.
Twenty-seven of the exonerations were based on false confessions, most because the defendant had a mental disability, was under the age of 18 or both. Official misconduct was blamed in 65 of the exonerations. Another 65 were based on guilty pleas. And 75 exonerations came about because it was later discovered that no crime had actually been committed. All four numbers are records for their category.
Why all the records? In part it’s because the number of Conviction Integrity Units has quadrupled to 24 since 2011. CIUs are divisions of prosecutorial offices that work to prevent, identify and correct false convictions.
“Exonerations are now common,” the report notes. “Not long ago, any exoneration we heard about was major news. Now it’s a familiar story. We average nearly three exonerations a week, and most get little attention.”
The report suggests that the criminal justice system is starting to recognize the terrible injustice that false convictions represent. It also suggests that there’s more work to do. As the report states, “This is not a problem that’s limited to a few counties. By any reasonable accounting, there are tens of thousands of false convictions each year across the country, and many more that have accumulated over the decades.”
Read the entire report here.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
