Is there a well researched statistic? I can’t remember where i’ve heard them, but i’ve heard numbers like 7%, 15%, 20%, etc. i don’t know how they were researched though or how true they were.
All of them. Just ask them.
It depends on what you mean by ‘innocent’.
The percentage of people that are fully and finally convicted of a criminal charge, and are actually, factually innocent with respect to that charge is vanishingly small.
Rolling back from that, there are a somewhat larger percentage of people who are likely factually guilty, but whose trials contained errors of one kind or another such that the government failed to correctly and completely prove its case in a manner that ensures confidence in the result – people, in other words, whose trial results are overturned and whose cases are remanded for new trials or outright dismissed. This is a non-trivial percentage of the participants in the criminal justice system.
The problem with your question is that it defies rigor. What do you mean by ‘innocent’ - and how would we know?
- Rick
For once, I agree with Bricker; the law is incapable of determining absolutely that a person did or did not commit a crime. Juries following the law can only conclude from evidence that it is likely beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty.
But the fact remains that there are many people in prison, some on death row, who should not be. In the case of convictions on capital offenses, the rate that convictions are overturned on appeal is astonishingly high:
A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995
I am convinced that innocent people have been executed in the US, and it is only a matter of a short time before positive case proof is uncovered that supports my view.
If we knew they were innocent, they wouldn’t be convicted. Therefore, to the best of out knowledge, 0% of those innocent are found guilty. If we had a better way of determining this in order to reach our percentages we’d get shot of the judicial system and use it.
What we can do is a percentage of those convicted who were found innocent on appeal. But it would be foolish to conclude that this accounted for all who are innocent. Again, to the best of our knowledge.
Essentially you are trying to gauge the accuracy of a measuring stick by measuring it with another equally inaccurate measuring stick. You need an outside point of reference that is guaranteed true. Short of a ‘god who shall judge us all’ we ain’t got that.
In short: what you’re after is impossible to detemine.
I am an ardent opponent of the death penalty, and I agree that the odds are overwhelming that an innocent person has been executed in recent US history.
That said, I dispute the characterization above. The appeals process is PART of the system; you cannot point to the fact that a conviction, when appealed, is overturned and found to have serious flaws as an example of failure or a reason to lack confidence in the outcome.
Now, after a petitioner’s final direct appeals have been exhausted, and then new evidence is found that impeaches the verdict, I agree that’s a fair situation to characterize as “broken.” And I agree it’s happened, but I don’t agree it’s fair to say it’s happened “many” times. It’s a very unlikely event.
Of course, with the stakes so high as a human life, even one is too frequent. But “many”, without qualification, suggests that a statistically significant portion of criminal convictions are questionable, and I don’t buy that.
- Rick
According to “Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases,” Hugo Adam Bedau & Michael L. Radelet, Stanford Law Review, November, 1987, Vol. 40, p. 171, several dozen people have been executed, and subsequently discovered to have been absolutely innocent.
Trinopus
Surely we can find a lower limit for the number of innocent people wrongly jailed, from the number of convictions which are quashed due to later conviction of the real culpret. Not that this is likely a large number. Also what are the numbers of people convicted prior to the use of DNA evidence, who were later proven not guilty by the use of DNA tests?
In the last fifty years? In the USA? I looked for a case like that, and in many GD threads others have looked for one, and not one could be found. I’d like to see a cite I can read, please. Now, if he is referring to a “legal lynching” in the pre-war South or something- well, fine, no one disputes stuff like that happened back then.
Futiel- no, sorry- wrong. Just here in SJ , they just found a man convicted of murdering his grilfreind with duct-tape did not do it, and he was released- with an apology. Another mans conviction for murder was overturned- but I will admit in his case, he was a criminal, invovled somehow in the crime, but where the evidence of actual murder was thrown out (i.e. he WAS scum, he was a crook, but we can’t prove he was a murderer). (Nickerson case)
And DNA has gotten many dudes where were found guilty to be released.
“Jailhouse informants” are starting to look real bad. I think we need to go over all the cases of the men who were convicted with such evidence- and if there was no other solid evidence- release them.
The Innocence Project has been working on this in death-penalty cases. The percentage of DNA tests that proved innocence after all legal procedures was uncomfortably high for me (one or two would have been a lot).
And some jurisdictions responded by getting rid of all stored evidence in cases where there had been convictions. How could that be justified?
There is a pretty factual, unbiased, study of possible innocence but executed cases at:
… for those who are interested.
A database of released death row convicts, including a (somewhat) factual list of reasons for their release, including some background information, can be found at:
http://www.dredmundhiggins.com/listofcases.htm
As other people have pointed out, it’s kinda hard to estimate the rate of wrong convictions since there’s really no way to know with certainty that a convicted person actually committed the crime.
Nevertheless, based on my experience as an attorney and my knowledge of human nature, I would guess that the percentage of people who are convicted but are actually innocent is about 1%, with a higher percentage for less serious crimes and a lower percentage for more serious crimes. When you get to capital crimes where the convicted person is executed, the percentage is very close to zero, and might actually be zero (in modern day USA of course). Just MHO.
And of course, this figure could be extrapolated, by assuming the same proportion of murders without DNA evidence had the wrong person convicted as those for which DNA evidence was tested after the trials had been completed.
A bit rough, but it’s an example of how we can estimate how many people in jail are innocent. (Saying 0% to the best of our knowledge doesn’t cut it.)
Oh, and while we’re defining ‘innocent’ I assume if I had a deal and pled guilty to a lesser crime I didn’t commit I wouldn’t count.
Well, I spent ten days in jail for something I didn’t do.
What I actually should say above was that since 1976 America has executed around 880 persons, while around 105 have been released. So, for every 9 person that is executed, 1 is “innocent”. Something which has inspired mind games like “If planes would fall from the sky 1 out of 10 times, would I still fly?”.
“Innocence” however is a difficult word. Some would say that many of those 105 got off on a technicality, some would say none did. The problem with this data is that rarely, if ever, will the courts rule someone innocent on appeal because that’s not how the appeal courts function. If the prosecution failed to hand over evidence that would have established actual innocence, or the defendants lawyer failed to introduce evidence at trial, the judge would simply overturn the conviction based on misconduct or inadequate counselling, and order the prosecution to release or retry within x number of days. In cases of actual innocence the prosecution will often choose not to retry, so the convict is not really aquitted in the eyes of the law (in a trial), the verdict is only overturned. This is a nice little detail often exploited by the pro-people.
The Death Penalty Information Center got a lot of data on this:
The Innocence Project handles only cases where actual innocence is suspected and where DNA evidence is available for retesting. They do a lot of non-deathpenalty cases too. I think they have gotten around 140 persons out of jail so far. Their work is mostly done by students.
Alien- there is a very sharp line between “executed but possibly innocent” and “executed and certainly innocent”. I have never been able to find a “recent” case in the second category, and that is exactly what Trinopus claims. Despite several GD on this subject, with reams of cites & info- no one else has ever come up with anyone in the second category.
Let us look at “innocent” for a minute, and those dudes who were charged or convicted, but were let go for one reason or another. Let us categorize them as follows, eh?
-
Almost certainly guilty, but got off an a technicality or police/DA error.
-
Probably guilty, but just not enough evidence, or some later thing overturns the case due to evidence being found in error.
-
Guilty as hell of other crimes, is undoubted scum- but probably didn’t commit this murder/crime.
-
Major evidence is found to be wrong, witness recants, etc- but suspect still has motive means opportunity.
-
Absolutely not guilty, solid DNA evidence overturns case, or they found the guy who really did it.
Of the “105”- how many are in category 5? 4? etc? If they are in category 1, I’d say the justice system failed, and we let a guilty man go free, rather than unfairly convicted an innocent man. If they are in category 5, I’d say we owe that man a large debt, and again- the system failed.
Sorry, I don’t have other cites… I cited the best reference I know of…
By the way, I was not including such weird cases as the guy in Texas who was executed, even though he was only the get-away driver, whereas the actual triggerman in the robbery/murder was not. In most states, just being a part of the crime makes you a “murderer” if someone gets killed. This case bugs me, because there is obviously some form of injustice, but in my response, I was only talking about people who were absolutely innocent.
Trinopus
Yes, but you didn’t really “cite” that book, you just said they said it. Howza about some actual quotes form the book, giving case studies, etc? and perhaps internet cites discussing the book? What nation were they dudes executed in? When?
Like I said- no one else was able to come up with even ONE instance in many debates on the subject, so I have my doubts about “several dozen”.
I looked Trinopus’ cite up. The cases are American executions ranging from 1915 to 1987. There are way, way too many cases to name, but for the most part it lists people who were exonerated while on death row (or in prison in cases in which the defendant didn’t get the death penalty although they could have) or who were executed only to have exculpatory evidence turn up later.
First off, the reason I mentioned death penalty cases is that these cases are examined with most scrutiny. Hence, any numbers here would provide at least some sort of an indication of the answer to the OP.
DrDeth,
There is absolutely no case where someone has been exonerated in the eyes of the law after being executed, not since the US resumed capital punishment in 1976 - because as far as the courts are concerned, a case is closed with the execution. You simply cannot go to the courts with such a claim, not even if you are a relative of the executed and would like to retest evidence to clear his/her name (ref. Robert Coleman case).
In fact, as far as I know, in all of the cases from before 1976 where executed have indeed been exonerated, this was done by the Governors, not by the courts.
But you don’t need much of a brain to understand that something is terribly wrong with some of these closed cases. To take one example:
Wife disappears. Husband is suspect. Within hours police puts husband under 24 hour surveillance. Fourteen days goes by. Wife turns up dead. Autopsy determines wife died within the last five days before discovery, 9-14 days after disappearance. Time for trial. Prosecution got problems. Husband was under surveillanc at time of death. Then, in court, autopsy report is changed. Wife now died 0 days after appearance. Looking bad for husband. Fast forward, appeal time. Multiple autopsy experts concludes wife died within 3 days of discovery, 11-14 days after disappearance. But husband is out of luck. Congress changes appeals law just prior to husband’s appeal is filed. Husband executed. Case closed. Endgame: State vigorously opposes any attempts of further investigation and testing.
In this is not even one of the most questionable cases, it’s just a case that’s easy to tell.
I would like to add the following two points to your list:
6. All of the evidence was found to be wrong, and the suspect had none or little motive
7. Defendant convicted soleby based on circumstantial evidence, new evidence indicating defendants innocence is found too late
And DrDeth, please keep to the facts. I said 105 persons (give and take!) has been realeased from deathrow - and I said that some say many of those were guilty, others say none were guilty. You step up and declare that 4 or 5 was innocent, and the rest guilty, without any cite or reason. You just picked a number, didn’t you? If you want to look behind the numbers, visit Death Penalty Information Center (link in post above), then visit the webpage of Justice for All, a group looking at these cases from the pro-pro-camp.
Mods, I suggest that this thread is moved to GD. It’s clearly no easy answer to the OP, and I think a wider debate would be beneficial.