Researchers recently found at least 4.1% of those facing the death penalty in the United States are likely innocent. The study, “Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced to Death,” was recently published in the nationally recognized scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Although the rate of wrongful conviction of innocent defendants has been considered “unknowable,” the authors of the research study employed survival analysis to reach the 4.1% finding—a figure that they consider to be a conservative estimate.
Since 1973, 1.6% of those sentenced to death in the United States—138 wrongfully convicted prisoners—have been exonerated and released due to innocence. However, many other innocent men and women on death row are not exonerated due to numerous factors, including the fact that many sentences are reduced for prisoners on death row after appeals to life in prison. Despite a prisoner’s release from death row, his reduction in sentencing makes his case much lower in priority for lawyers, courts, and governors than if it were to remain a capital case—as the risk of executing an innocent man is more severe.
According to University of Michigan Law School Professor Samuel R. Gross, the lead author of the study, “The great majority of innocent people who are sentenced to death are never identified and freed. The purpose of our study is to account for the innocent defendants who are not exonerated.”
Read the study here.