This list of wrongful convictions in the United States includes people who have been legally exonerated, including people whose convictions have been overturned or vacated, and who have not been retried because the charges were dismissed by the states. It also includes some historic cases of people who have not been formally exonerated (by a formal process such as has existed in the United States since the mid 20th century) but who historians believe are factually innocent. Generally, research by historians has revealed original conditions of bias or extrajudicial actions that related to their convictions and/or executions.
Crime descriptions marked with an asterisk indicate that the events were later determined not to be criminal acts. People who were wrongfully accused are sometimes never released.
By February 2020, a total of 2,551 exonerations were mentioned in the
National Registry of Exonerations The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the University of Michigan Law School, Michigan State University College of Law and the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Society. The Registry was co-founded in 2012 ...
. The total time these exonerated people spent in prison adds up to 22,540 years. Detailed data from 1989 regarding every known exoneration in the United States is listed. Data prior to 1989, however, is limited. By 2020, twenty individuals had been exonerated while on
death row
Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting Capital punishment, execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of ...
due to DNA evidence.
Before 1900
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
See also
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Capital punishment debate in the United States The debate over capital punishment in the United States existed as early as the colonial period. As of April 2022, it remains a legal penalty within 27 states, the federal government, and military criminal justice systems. The states of Colorado, ...
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Capital punishment in the United States
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 s ...
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Exculpatory evidence
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False confession
A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogat ...
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Innocence Project
Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who have been wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent futur ...
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Innocent prisoner's dilemma
The innocent prisoner's dilemma, or parole deal, is a detrimental effect of a legal system in which admission of guilt can result in reduced sentences or early parole. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime, legal systems which n ...
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List of exonerated death row inmates
This list contains names of people who were found guilty of capital crimes and placed on death row but later found to be wrongly convicted. Many of these exonerees' sentences were overturned by acquittal or pardon, but some of those listed were ...
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List of miscarriage of justice cases
This is a list of miscarriage of justice cases. This list includes cases where a convicted individual was later cleared of the crime and either has received an official exoneration, or a consensus exists that the individual was unjustly punished ...
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List of United States death row inmates
, there were 2,414 death row inmates in the United States. The number of death row inmates changes frequently with new convictions, appellate decisions overturning conviction or sentence alone, commutations, or deaths (through execution or otherw ...
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List of women on death row in the United States
This is a list of women on death row in the United States. The number of death row inmates fluctuates daily with new convictions, appellate decisions overturning conviction or sentence alone, commutations, or deaths (through execution or otherw ...
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Miscarriage of justice
A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome occurs in a criminal procedure, criminal or civil procedure, civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they actual innocence, did not commit. Mis ...
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Overturned convictions in the United States
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Alabama
Blount County
* Bill Wilson was convicted of the 1912 murder of his wife and child and sentenced to life in prison. He was exonerated in 1918 when they were both ...
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Prosecutorial misconduct
In jurisprudence, prosecutorial misconduct or prosecutorial overreach is "an illegal act or failing to act, on the part of a prosecutor, especially an attempt to sway the jury to wrongly convict a defendant or to impose a harsher than appropri ...
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Race in the United States criminal justice system
Race in the United States criminal justice system refers to the unique experiences and disparities in the United States in regard to the policing and prosecuting of various races. There have been different outcomes for different racial groups i ...
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Wrongful executions in the United States
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Maurice Hastings
References
Further reading
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Jed S. Rakoff
Jed Saul Rakoff (born August 1, 1943) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Education
Rakoff was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 1, 1943. He grew up in ...
,
Jailed by Bad Science, ''
The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXVI, no. 20 (19 December 2019), pp. 79–80, 85. According to Judge Rakoff (p. 85), "forensic techniques that in their origin were simply viewed as aids to police investigations have taken on an importance in the criminal justice system that they frequently cannot support. Their results are portrayed... as possessing a degree of validity and reliability that they simply do not have." Rakoff commends (p. 85) the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
recommendation to "creat
an independent National Institute of Forensic Science to do the basic testing and promulgate the basic standards that would make forensic science much more genuinely scientific."
External links
The National Registry of Exonerations* Exoneration profiles a
{{Portal bar, United States, Law
Overturned convictions in the United States,
Trials in the United States
Abuse of the legal system
Recipients of American gubernatorial pardons