Jerry Miller, a for­mer army cook who spent near­ly 25 years behind bars for a crime he did not com­mit, became the nation’s 200th per­son freed from prison or death row through DNA test­ing. The first DNA exon­er­a­tion in the U.S. took place in 1989. Thirteen years lat­er, the num­ber of freed inmates reached 100, and just five years after that, it dou­bled. ​“Five years ago, peo­ple said that the num­ber (of exon­er­a­tions) was going to dry up because there just weren’t many wrong­ful con­vic­tions. But clear­ly, there are plen­ty of inno­cent per­sons still in prison. There’s no way you can look at this data with­out believ­ing that,” said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the New York-based Innocence Project that assist­ed Miller and helps oth­er pris­on­ers seek­ing to prove their inno­cence through DNA evi­dence. Immediately fol­low­ing Miller’s exon­er­a­tion, the Innocence Project launched ​“200 Exonerated, Too Many Wrongfully Convicted,” a month-long nation­al cam­paign to address and pre­vent wrongful convictions.

In 1982, Miller was con­vict­ed of rap­ing and kid­nap­ping an office work­er in a park­ing garage in Chicago. Miller, who is black, was iden­ti­fied by two park­ing lot atten­dants, who were also black. The vic­tim, who was white, could not iden­ti­fy her assailant. Miller con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence while he was in prison and con­tin­ued to insist he was not guilty of the crime even after being paroled last year. While Miller was on parole, he had to reg­is­ter as a sex offend­er, which required him to wear an elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing device at all times. New DNA tests per­formed by the Innocence Project in March 2007 showed that Miller’s genet­ic pro­file dif­fered from the rapist’s, prov­ing that he did not com­mit the crime. Based on this new evi­dence, the Cook County State Attorney’s Office joined the Innocence Project and the Cook County Public Defender’s Office in a joint motion to vacate and dis­miss Miller’s con­vic­tion.

Fourteen of the nation’s 200 DNA exon­er­a­tions have been death penal­ty cas­es. According to Scheck, the ​“typ­i­cal” DNA exon­er­a­tion case has not changed much over the past two decades. He not­ed that it often involves a sex crime alleged­ly com­mit­ted by a black man in which the white vic­tim is often the only wit­ness. Most exon­er­a­tions come from cas­es from the 1980s and 1990s, before DNA test­ing was avail­able or wide­ly used. The Innocence Project now has affil­i­ates at law schools and law offices across the nation.

David Lazer, a Harvard University pub­lic pol­i­cy pro­fes­sor who spe­cial­izes in DNA issues, pre­dicts that improved test­ing tech­nol­o­gy and the grow­ing num­ber of attor­neys who are pur­su­ing DNA cas­es should result in a con­tin­ued increase in the num­ber of exon­er­a­tions.

(USA Today, April 23, 2007, and Innocence Project Press Release, April 23, 2007). Read the Innocence Project’s Press Release about Jerry Miller’s exon­er­a­tion. See the Inno­cence Project’s ​“200 Exonerated, Too Many Wrongfully Convicted” Web page. See also, Innocence.
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