Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> StandDown Texas Project

Criminal Law

: StandDown Texas Project

Convicting the Innocent

By standdown

That's the title of new scholarship by Sam Gross of the University of Michigan School of Law, a leading scholar examining wrongful convictions.  A news release is titled, "Exonerations correct only a small fraction of wrongful convictions."Criminal justice scholars often say that the true number of innocent people convicted of crimes is unknown?in fact, unknowable. A new University of Michigan study challenges that belief in one important context.Among defendants sentenced to death in the United States since 1973, at least 2.3 percent?and possibly more?were falsely convicted, said U-M law professor Samuel Gross in a study co-authored by Barbara O'Brien, a professor at Michigan State University College of Law.If defendants who were sentenced to prison had been freed because of innocence at the same rate as those who were sentenced to death, there would have been nearly 87,000 non-death row exonerations in the United States from 1989 through 2003, rather than the 266 that were reported, the study said...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on February 03, 2009 (boomark / email).