Report: Black People 7.5 Times More Likely to Be Wrongfully Convicted of Murder than Whites, Risk Even Greater if Victim was White

Black peo­ple are about 7½ times more like­ly to be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der in the U.S. than are whites, and about 80% more like­ly to be inno­cent than oth­ers con­vict­ed of mur­der, accord­ing to a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations. The already dis­pro­por­tion­ate risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tion, the Registry found, was even worse if the mur­der vic­tim in a case was white.

The report, Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States 2022, reviewed the cas­es of 3,200 inno­cent defen­dants exon­er­at­ed in the United States since 1989. Black peo­ple, the researchers found, were 7 times more like­ly to be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, were more like­ly to be the tar­gets of police mis­con­duct, and more like­ly to be impris­oned longer before being exonerated.

Black peo­ple were over­rep­re­sent­ed in every cat­e­go­ry of the 1,167 wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions in the Registry’s data­base. African Americans con­sti­tut­ed 56% (74/​134) of all death sen­tenced exonerees; 55% (294/​535) of wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions result­ing in life impris­on­ment; and 54% (270/​497) of wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions in which exonerees were sen­tenced to impris­on­ment for terms of years. ​“Innocent Black peo­ple are about sev­en-and-a-half times more like­ly to be con­vict­ed of mur­der than inno­cent white peo­ple,” the Registry report­ed. That fig­ure, the report not­ed, ​“applies equal­ly to those who are sen­tenced to death and those who are not.”

“The report real­ly shows the depth of the belief that race is a proxy for crim­i­nal­i­ty in the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem,” Innocence Project Executive Director Christina Swarns said.

The Registry’s review of mur­der exon­er­a­tion data found that inno­cent Black defen­dants were also more like­ly to be more harsh­ly pun­ished than inno­cent white defen­dants. Among mur­der exonerees who were not sen­tenced to death or life impris­on­ment, Black defen­dants were sen­tenced to an aver­age prison term of 35 years. White mur­der exonerees who were not sen­tenced to death or life impris­on­ment were sen­tenced to an aver­age term of 28 years in prison. 

The report also found a ​“pat­tern of harsh sen­tenc­ing for mur­der con­vic­tions with white vic­tims and lighter sen­tenc­ing for those with Black vic­tims.” This pat­tern, the Registry found, ​“is not restrict­ed to death sen­tences. If they avoid the death penal­ty, inno­cent mur­der defen­dants in white-vic­tim cas­es are also more like­ly to be sen­tenced to life in prison than those charged with killing Black victims.”

Black peo­ple wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der also spent longer in pris­on­er before being exon­er­at­ed than their white coun­ter­parts. Of the 75 inno­cent death-row defen­dants who spent 30 years or longer in prison before being exon­er­at­ed, 67% are Black. ​“The racial pat­tern is sim­i­lar for all mur­der exonerees, regard­less of sen­tence,” the report notes. ​“Of the 181 exonerees who spent 25 years or longer in prison before release, 68% are Black; among the ten who lost 40 or more years to prison, it’s 80%.”

Official mis­con­duct was ram­pant in wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions, and here too Black defen­dants dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly bore the brunt. The report found that ​“offi­cial mis­con­duct is con­sid­er­ably high­er among mur­der exon­er­a­tions with Black defen­dants than those with white defen­dants, 78% (500/​638) com­pared to 64% (236/​369).” The over­all rate of mis­con­duct was high­er in cap­i­tal cas­es: 78% as opposed to 73% in non-cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tions. Here, too, there were sig­nif­i­cant racial dis­par­i­ties: ​“85% (63/​74) of Black exonerees who were sen­tenced to death were vic­tims of offi­cial mis­con­duct, com­pared to 70% (32/​46) of white death-row exonerees,” the researchers found.

The report con­tained a somber warn­ing about cas­es in which inno­cence has remained unde­tect­ed or, if brought to the court’s atten­tion has been left uncor­rect­ed. ​“Most inno­cent defen­dants who are con­vict­ed of crimes are not exon­er­at­ed,” the Registry report­ed. ​“Judging from the rate of false con­vic­tion among death sen­tences,… sev­er­al thou­sand defen­dants have been false­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der in America in the past 40 years …, more than half of them were Black.”