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2015 was a record-breaking year for exonerations in the United States.

The National Registry of Exonerations has recorded 149 exonerations in 2015. The exonerated defendants had served, on average, more than 14 years in prison.
The previous record—139 exonerations—was set the year before, in 2014. All told, the National Registry of Exonerations has recorded 1,733 known exonerations in the United States since 1989 (as of January 27, 2016).

The report goes on to break down the exonerations in 2015 by state. Texas had 54, by far the most, with second place New York having only 17.

What do you think this means?

The report is found at the website of the National Registry of Exonerations at the University of Michigan Law School. I can't figure out how to get a link with this iPad.

JALLEN wrote:What do you think this means?

.... that the criminal defense attorney's in TX were not very good 14 years (on average) ago... ?

Seriously....
Without corresponding incarceration numbers it's hard to know how to compare...
If TX has 3 times the incarceration rate vs NY, then 17 and 54 are about equal rates of exoneration.

You know, 67.3% of statistics are misleading, and the rest flat wrong.

The populations of Texas and New York are what?

Texas has over 1/3 of the exonerations, with what.... ~10% of the population?

The Census reports as of 12/15, US population was ~318 million, NY was a skosh under 20 million, Texas a skosh under 27 million.

No wonder there are so many idiot Congressmen running around here.

Sorry if I was unclear.... My fault.

If Texas had 30,000 incarcerations vs. NY 10,000 incarcerations over similar time periods, then 54 vs 17 would be same-same.

Then you'd need to split hairs about what kind of crimes folks were exonerated from.... If the exonerations were from rape and murder convictions, for example, then I would want to leave petty crime and drug convictions out of the numbers...

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Net-net.... I think your question really is....

Can we draw any solid conclusions about juries, biases, police work, prosecutorial process, etc.?
I'd say a firm "No", from this statistic alone, but, I'd agree that it begs further investigation.

The difference might very well reflect the enthusiasm with which various parties look for people to exonerate. If you set out to find something, versus waiting for it to cross your path, you are likely to find more of what you are looking for.

RoyGBiv wrote:Sorry if I was unclear.... My fault.

If Texas had 30,000 incarcerations vs. NY 10,000 incarcerations over similar time periods, then 54 vs 17 would be same-same.

Then you'd need to split hairs about what kind of crimes folks were exonerated from.... If the exonerations were from rape and murder convictions, for example, then I would want to leave petty crime and drug convictions out of the numbers...

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Net-net.... I think your question really is....

Can we draw any solid conclusions about juries, biases, police work, prosecutorial process, etc.?
I'd say a firm "No", from this statistic alone, but, I'd agree that it begs further investigation.

The report is online. I've not fully gotten it into my head yet.

I doubt that with average length of incarceration of 14 years before exoneration, they can counting spittin on the sidewalk type cases.

General population statistics may not be the best way to compare the demographics for exonerations. Texas has an extremely large number of residents under criminal justice control. One out of twenty adult Texans are under TDCJ control (incarcerated, parole or probation). Over 700,000, though I saw 750,000 in one report. Highest prison population in the US; more than 163,000. Even more than California which has 13 million more residents. Texas often under counts prisoners by not counting transfer unit inmates. so the official number may be much higher.

puma guy wrote:General population statistics may not be the best way to compare the demographics for exonerations. Texas has an extremely large number of residents under criminal justice control. One out of twenty adult Texans are under TDCJ control (incarcerated, parole or probation). Over 700,000, though I saw 750,000 in one report. Highest prison population in the US; more than 163,000. Even more than California which has 13 million more residents. Texas often under counts prisoners by not counting transfer unit inmates. so the official number may be much higher.

One in twenty? That number is so disturbing. It boggles my mind.

Here is the link.

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exone ... n_2015.pdf

I never could figure out a way to get a link with the iPad, so I had to go out and fire up ol Blunderbus.

Convicting innocent people is a disquieting phenomena.