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National innocence data understated by excluding drug war exonerations

Adam Liptak has an article in the New York Times ("Consensus on counting the innocent: We can't," March 25) making a statistical point nationally about exonerations that I'd made previously for Dallas County, Texas' exoneration capital: The total exonerations routinely counted only include cases overturned through DNA evidence, but a lot more innocent people are exonerated than that. Indeed, Liptak's discussion shows why many of the numbers for innocent people convicted that are routinely bandied about have little validity at all, because they exclude so many offenses. Wrote Liptak:A couple of years ago, Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring in a Supreme Court death penalty decision, took stock of the American criminal justice system and pronounced himself satisfied...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on March 25, 2008 (boomark / email).