For Inclusion on DPIC’s Innocence List:

Defendants must have been con­vict­ed, sen­tenced to death and subsequently either-

  1. Been acquit­ted of all charges relat­ed to the crime that placed them on death row, or
  2. Had all charges relat­ed to the crime that placed them on death row dis­missed by the pros­e­cu­tion or the courts, or
  3. Been grant­ed a com­plete par­don based on evi­dence of innocence.

The list includes cas­es in which the release occurred 1973 or later. 

For a fuller descrip­tion of the cri­te­ria used in this list and the rea­sons why these cri­te­ria were cho­sen, see Section V of DPIC’s most recent Innocence Report. See also an excerpt below from an arti­cle in the Baltimore Sun by Dan Rodricks regard­ing the use of the term ​“exon­er­at­ed.”

Use of the term ​“exon­er­at­ed”: Columnist Dan Rodricks of the Baltimore Sun asked DPIC about its list of exon­er­at­ed indi­vid­u­als. DPIC’s then-Executive Director Richard Dieter respond­ed, and that response was reprint­ed in Mr. Rodricks’ col­umn, July 5, 2009: 

With respect to your ques­tion about our list of exon­er­at­ed indi­vid­u­als, we use very strict and objec­tive cri­te­ria for inclu­sion of cas­es on this list. Basically, the list is deter­mined by the deci­sions of courts and pros­e­cu­tor offices, not by our sub­jec­tive judg­ment. As we state in a num­ber of places on our Web site and in our reports, the cri­te­ria for inclu­sion on the list is:

Defendants must have been con­vict­ed, sen­tenced to death and sub­se­quent­ly either- a) their con­vic­tion was overturned AND

i) they were acquit­ted at re-trial or

ii) all charges were dropped

b) they were giv­en an absolute par­don by the gov­er­nor based on new evi­dence of innocence.
The list includes cas­es where the release occurred in 1973 or lat­er, which was the time that states resumed sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to death after the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the death penal­ty. The list orig­i­nat­ed from a request from Congress ask­ing us to iden­ti­fy the risks that inno­cent peo­ple might be exe­cut­ed. The orig­i­nal list that we pre­pared was pub­lished as a Staff Report of the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. The list has been favor­ably referred to by Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and oth­er fed­er­al courts, as well as by many pub­lic offi­cials around the country.

We believe the term ​“exon­er­at­ed” is entire­ly appro­pri­ate to refer to the indi­vid­u­als on this list, which now num­bers [159] indi­vid­u­als. Exonerate means to clear, as of an accu­sa­tion, and seems to come from the Latin ​“ex” and ​“onus” mean­ing to unbur­den. That is pre­cise­ly what has occurred in these cas­es. The defen­dants were con­vict­ed, giv­en a bur­den of guilt, and then that bur­den was lift­ed when they were acquit­ted at a re-tri­al or the pros­e­cu­tion dropped all charges after the con­vic­tion was reversed. These are not indi­vid­u­als who received a less­er sen­tence or who remained guilty of a less­er charge relat­ed to the same set of cir­cum­stances. All guilt was lift­ed by the same sys­tem that had imposed it in the first place. Our jus­tice sys­tem is the only objec­tive source for mak­ing such a determination.

This notion of inno­cence, that an indi­vid­ual is inno­cent unless proven guilty, is a bedrock prin­ci­ple of our con­sti­tu­tion and our soci­etal pro­tec­tion against abu­sive state pow­er. One does not lose the sta­tus of inno­cence mere­ly because a pros­e­cu­tor or oth­er indi­vid­u­als retain a sus­pi­cion of guilt. Of course, it is true that this list makes no god-like deter­mi­na­tion of know­ing exact­ly what hap­pened in the orig­i­nal crime. Such per­fect knowl­edge of past events is impos­si­ble, either to absolute­ly prove that a per­son did or did not do an act. We do not try to make a sub­jec­tive judg­ment of what we think hap­pened in the crime. We are mere­ly report­ing that in a great many cas­es the jus­tice sys­tem con­vict­ed an indi­vid­ual and sen­tenced them to death, but when the process that arrived at that con­clu­sion was reviewed, the con­vic­tion and sen­tence were thrown out. The indi­vid­ual, who often came close to exe­cu­tion, could not even be con­vict­ed of a traf­fic vio­la­tion. Surely, that should be a cause of con­cern in apply­ing the death penalty.