Innocents Convicted: An Empirically Justified Wrongful Conviction Rate

Rate of false conviction of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death

“…In a previous study we found that 2.3% of all death sentences imposed from 1973 through 1989 resulted in exoneration by the end of 2004 (7). A study by Risinger (10) estimated that had biological samples been available for testing in all cases, 3.3% of defendants sentenced to death between 1982 and 1989 for murders that included rape would have been exonerated by DNA evidence through February 2006. That estimate, however, is based on a small number of exonerations (n = 11) (10).…”

“…A study by Risinger (10) estimated that had biological samples been available for testing in all cases, 3.3% of defendants sentenced to death between 1982 and 1989 for murders that included rape would have been exonerated by DNA evidence through February 2006. That estimate, however, is based on a small number of exonerations (n = 11) (10). Both studies were limited to convictions that occurred 15 y or more before the study date, and so include a high proportion of all exonerations that will ever occur in the relevant groups.…”

The Social Construction of Expertise

“…There were forensic science testing errors in 63% of the cases and false or misleading testimony by forensic scientists in 27% of the cases. Michael Risinger (2007) has shown that the wrongful conviction rate for rape-murders in the 1980s is at least 3.3%, and likely higher. With over a million felony convictions a year, these numbers point to over 20,000 false felony convictions per year attributable at least in part to forensic science errors.…”

Actual innocence: is death different?

“…At the same time, the liberty and reputational interests of persons charged with non-capital crimes also are profoundly important. Although hundreds of innocent people have erroneously been convicted and sentenced to death in the last century, including several in the modern era of capital punishment (Bedau & Radelet, 1987;Death Penalty Information Center, 2008a), their numbers are dwarfed by those wrongfully convicted in non-capital cases (Garrett, 2008;Gross, Jacoby, Matheson, Montgomery, & Patil, 2005;Horan, 2000;Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986;Risinger, 2007). A policy limiting available procedural safeguards that enhance the reliability of guilt-determination to capital prosecutions, rather than extending them to criminal cases generally, would be difficult to defend on other than strictly pragmatic grounds, rooted in economics and resource constraints.…”