A report in the Chicago Tribune reveals that police and pros­e­cu­tors rarely pur­sue new leads and sus­pects after a wrong­ly con­vict­ed defen­dant has been exon­er­at­ed of the crime and released from death row. As a result, few sus­pects are brought to jus­tice for crimes once con­sid­ered so heinous that they were wor­thy of the death penal­ty, and the actu­al per­pe­tra­tors remain in soci­ety to poten­tial­ly com­mit addi­tion­al crimes. The Tribune report not­ed that court records indi­cate that an alter­nate sus­pect was iden­ti­fied in dozens of cas­es that result­ed in wrong­ful con­vic­tions, but police charged a new sus­pect in just 10 cas­es, a reflec­tion of the dif­fi­cul­ty of pur­su­ing an old case and the reluc­tance of author­i­ties to admit error and seek new sus­pects. In three of those 10 cas­es, the cru­cial work to solve the crime was not done by law enforce­ment, but was com­plet­ed by defense attor­neys, pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors, or stu­dents. The paper’s inves­ti­ga­tion also found that law enforce­ment even fails to rein­ves­ti­gate cas­es involv­ing DNA evi­dence. The arti­cle states, ​“In some of those cas­es, police did not take even the sim­plest inves­ti­ga­tion step — enter­ing genet­ic pro­file evi­dence into a data­base to iden­ti­fy the real attack­er.” Many death row exonerees remain under a cloud of pub­lic sus­pi­cion because law enforce­ment fail to find the true per­pe­tra­tor of the crime. (Chicago Tribune, October 27, 2003) See Innocence.

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