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How Many More Are Innocent?

By Steve Hall

That's the title of Radley Balko's post from last week at his Reason.com blog.  It's subtitled, "America's 250th DNA exoneration raises questions about how often we send the wrong person to prison."  Thanks to the loyal reader who forwarded.  An extended excerpt:Freddie Peacock of Rochester, New York, was convicted of rape in 1976. Last week he became the 250th person to be exonerated by DNA testing since 1989. According to a new report by the Innocence Project, those 250 prisoners served 3,160 years between them; 17 spent time on death row. Remarkably, 67 percent of them were convicted after 2000?a decade after the onset of modern DNA testing. The glaring question here is, How many more are there?Calculating the percentage of innocents now in prison is a tricky and controversial process...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on February 16, 2010 (boomark / email).