According to a new study, which is also widely known in the black community, blacks are wrongly convicted more than whites. The report shows that while African Americans make up only 13% of the population they make up 47% of the 1,900 [total] exonerations in the prison system.
A record number of people, at least 166, were exonerated last year after being wrongly convicted of crimes, according to the most recent annual report from the National Registry of Exonerations.
It’s the third year in a row that data collected by a group of law schools showed a record number of exonerations in the U.S. — with 149 in 2015 and 125 the year before that.
Using information on exonerations going back to 1989, the latest report also shows that black people continue to be more likely to be wrongly convicted in America than people of other races. There is no standardized reporting system for exonerations, but the registry is the most complete national data collected on the subject.
Take the crime of murder. Last year, the report collected data on 52 people who were exonerated of murder. More than half of them, 28, were black.
A companion report on race and wrongful conviction, also released Tuesday, states:
“African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 [total] exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016).”
One of those exonerated, Devontae Sanford, was 14 years old when four people were killed in a house in his Detroit neighborhood. The black teenager confessed to the killings and, despite testing negative for gunshot residue and not matching descriptions of the perpetrators provided by witnesses, he was convicted and sentenced to 37 to 90 years in prison.
Continue reading via NPR.