A recent San Francisco mag­a­zine arti­cle enti­tled ​“Innocence Lost,” exam­ines California’s record of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. The researchers report that the nation’s largest crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem has sent more inno­cent peo­ple to prison for longer terms than any oth­er state. Among the exonerees are three from the state’s death row and near­ly 200 peo­ple who were serv­ing either life or very long terms. The mag­a­zine notes that despite these num­bers, state law­mak­ers have repeat­ed­ly passed up oppor­tu­ni­ties to put safe­guards in place that could pre­vent such errors from hap­pen­ing in the future. Among oth­er key find­ing’s in the mag­a­zine’s year-long review of wrong­ful con­vic­tions were the following:

  • Over the past 15 years, at least 200 California inmates have been freed after courts found they were unjust­ly con­vict­ed — near­ly twice the num­ber of exon­er­a­tions as in the next two states (Illinois and Texas) combined.
  • California has been sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to life at an alarm­ing rate. More than 30,000 inmates are serv­ing life terms, twice as many as in the entire European Union, which has a pop­u­la­tion 12 times larg­er. Approximately 17% of California inmates are lif­ers, com­pared to 9% of pris­on­ers in the U.S. as a whole. 
  • Some 63% of wrong­ful con­vic­tions in San Francisco’s research sam­ple of 30 cas­es involved seri­ous police error or mis­con­duct. Some 47% of wrong­ful con­vic­tions in the sam­ple involved seri­ous pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al error or mis­con­duct. More than 90% were upheld on direct appeal.
  • In a sur­vey of 676 vot­ers con­duct­ed for the mag­a­zine by David Binder Research, 69% believe lif­ers should have the same rights to free attor­neys and lev­els of appeal as peo­ple fac­ing exe­cu­tion. Of those polled, 61% also sup­port adding safe­guards to pre­vent wrong­ful life sen­tences and 78% favor fir­ing police or pros­e­cu­tors who break the rules to get a con­vic­tion. Currently, action is rarely ever tak­en against these individuals.
  • While DNA data­bas­es may be help­ful in free­ing some wrong­ly con­vict­ed indi­vid­u­als, only about 10% of crim­i­nal cas­es have any bio­log­i­cal evi­dence — blood, semen, etc. — to test.
  • California’s ​“three strikes” law has added approx­i­mate­ly 7,500 peo­ple serv­ing life terms to the state’s pris­ons. It has pres­sured some inno­cent peo­ple to accept deals and plead guilty to crimes they did­n’t com­mit rather than risk the auto­mat­ic life sen­tence of a third strike.
(San Francisco, November 2004) Read the arti­cle (pdf for­mat). See Innocence. See Life Without Parole.
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