The Innocence Project is celebrating the latest prisoner to be exonerated through DNA testing in the United States by detailing his case and the cases of each of the 249 wrongfully convicted who came before him. The report, 250 Exonerated: Too Many Wrongfully Convicted also offers a crunching of the exoneration numbers, among them:
– There have been DNA exonerations in 33 states and the District of Columbia.
– The top three states for DNA exonerations are New York (with 25), Texas (with 40) and Illinois (with 29).
– 76% of the wrongful convictions involved eyewitness misidentification.
– 50% involved unvalidated or improper forensic science.
– 27% relied on a false confession, admission or guilty plea.
– 70% of the 250 people exonerated are people of color (60% are black; nearly 9% are Latino; 29% are white).
Source: The Innocence Project
