Researchers at the University of Michigan iden­ti­fied 328 crim­i­nal cas­es, includ­ing 73 death penal­ty cas­es, over the last 15 years in which the defen­dant was ulti­mate­ly exon­er­at­ed. The study sug­gest­ed that many more inno­cent peo­ple are in prison today. Most of the cas­es stud­ied involved mur­der and rape, crimes that are sub­ject­ed to the most intense police inves­ti­ga­tion but that can also pro­vide defen­dants with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to prove their inno­cence based on DNA evi­dence. Of the 328 cas­es of inno­cence exam­ined by law pro­fes­sor Samuel R. Gross and his assis­tants, 199 were mur­der cas­es. While DNA evi­dence played a cru­cial role in exon­er­at­ing 145 of the wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, and was a fac­tor in 88% of the rape cas­es, researchers not­ed that DNA evi­dence is far less like­ly to be avail­able to pro­vide defin­i­tive proof of inno­cence in oth­er kinds of cas­es. While the racial make­up of the exonerees was sim­i­lar to the U.S.’s gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion, race did seem to play a fac­tor in the exon­er­a­tions involv­ing rape. Black men rep­re­sent 29% of those in prison for rape, but they account for 65% of those exon­er­at­ed of the crime. In half of those rape exon­er­a­tions, the black men were false­ly accused of rap­ing white women. (New York Times, April 19, 2004) To read the full report in PDF for­mat, Click here. See Innocence. See Race.

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