Thirty Years of Innocence

Abstract

Systematic reporting of data about wrongful conviction cases in the United States typically begins with 1989, the year of the country’s first post-conviction, DNA-based exonerations. Year-end 2018 thus concludes a full thirty years of information and marks a propitious time to take stock. In this article, we provide an overview of known exonerations, innocence advocacy, and wrongful conviction-related policy reforms in the U.S. during these three decades. First, we provide a brief history of wrongful convictions in the U.S. before turning to the modern era of innocence. We describe the key sources of data pertaining to wrongful convictions and exonerations. Then, using case data from the National Registry of Exonerations, we offer a detailed analysis of national and state-by-state trends in exonerations, including annual totals, DNA- and non-DNA-exonerations, and capital case exonerations. Our examination includes factors corresponding to sources of error, state death-penalty status, and regional differences. We then discuss innocence advocacy organizations, with a particular focus on Centurion Ministries and members of the Innocence Network. This is followed by an examination of state-by-state trends in innocence-related policy reforms on key issues as identified by the Innocence Project. The final section of the article discusses the many important matters we do not yet know about wrongful convictions and poses thoughts, questions, and ideas for continued scholarship focusing on miscarriages of justice. The Appendix provides state-by-state summaries of select information relating to wrongful convictions and innocence reforms.

Innocence as burden and resource: Adaptation and resistance during wrongful imprisonment

“…As the number of exonerations in the United States has grown in the past few decades, there has been an accompanying “criminal justice revolution” (Garrett, 2020: 246) focused on identifying and remedying wrongful convictions (Norris, 2017; Norris et al, 2020). Scholarship on wrongful convictions has also rapidly grown in recent years, with studies seeking to determine the extent, causes, and consequences of wrongful convictions (Garrett, 2020).…”

Secondary characters in narratives of wrongful conviction

“…Although wrongful convictions most directly harm the innocent, they also affect original crime victims, family members (of both the wrongfully convicted and the original victims), other victims who are harmed when the actual perpetrator is not apprehended, and community members whose trust in the legal system is eroded when miscarriages of justice occur (Norris et al, 2020; Thompson and Baumgartner, 2018). Scholars describing the “web of impact” of wrongful convictions have thus argued that we must pay more attention to the “rippling damage” engendered by wrongful convictions (Norris et al, 2020: 39; Westervelt and Cook, 2012).…”

“…I build on efforts to consider how wrongful convictions “[entangle] an array of people” (Norris et al, 2020: 39) by exploring not only how the harms of wrongful convictions reach beyond exonerees, but also by examining how harms borne by exonerees themselves are perpetrated by individuals other than state actors. I thus extend existing research on how wrongful conviction harms are experienced, how blame is assigned, and how victimhood and triumph are interpreted.…”

“…Whereas traditional wrongful convictions scholarship has focused primarily on how investigations that culminate in wrongful convictions harm innocent people, scholars and advocates alike have recently argued for the need to pay more attention to the "circles of harm" connected to wrongful convictions (Norris et al, 2020;Thompson and Baumgartner, 2018). Although wrongful convictions most directly harm the innocent, they also affect original crime victims, family members (of both the wrongfully convicted and the original victims), other victims who are harmed when the actual perpetrator is not apprehended, and community members whose trust in the legal system is eroded when miscarriages of justice occur (Norris et al, 2020;Thompson and Baumgartner, 2018). Scholars describing the "web of impact" of wrongful convictions have thus argued that we must pay more attention to the "rippling damage" engendered by wrongful convictions (Norris et al, 2020: 39;Westervelt and Cook, 2012).…”

The risks and consequences of innocence in school discipline: Implications for policy and research.

“…The purpose of this article is to unite two distinct literatures: the risks and consequences of school criminalization and the risks and consequences of wrongful convictions of youth . Scholarship surrounding the causes of wrongful convictions has expanded substantially since 1989 when DNA was first used to exonerate the innocent in the United States (Norris et al, 2020). This work has consistently found one type of evidence to be particularly strong in leading to convictions of the innocent: false confessions (Kassin et al, 2010).…”