From The National Registry of Exonerations:
In 2018, the National Registry of Exonerations reported a grim milestone: Exonerated defendants had collectively served 20,000 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Just three years later, in June 2021, we reached another: Time lost to false convictions exceeded 25,000 years. The total
now stands at 25,004 years, on average more than 8 years and 11 months in prison for each of the 2,795 exonerees in the Registry. Innocent Black defendants served a majority of that time — a total of 14,525 years lost to unjust imprisonment.
The National Registry of Exonerations reports every known exoneration in the United States since 1989, a total of 2,795 as of June 1, 2021. Dozens of defendants exonerated since our 2018 report served more than 25 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Ronnie Long was convicted of
rape in 1976 in North Carolina, following a trial marred by official misconduct, mistaken eyewitness testimony, perjury, and false forensic evidence. He served almost 44 years before being exonerated in 2020. Clifford Williams Jr. and his nephew, Hubert Nathan Meyers, spent more than 42 years in
a Florida prison (several of which Williams served on death row) for a murder they did not commit before their exonerations in 2019. Their trial was marred by prosecutorial misconduct, mistaken eyewitness testimony, and an inadequate legal defense.
Not all of the exonerees who served many years for crimes they did not commit were convicted of violent crimes like murder or rape. Lawrence Martin spent nearly 19 years in California prisons for possession of a knife with a locking blade. He was sentenced under the state’s “Three Strikes” law, which relied upon past convictions to compound his punishment into a life sentence. Martin was
released in 2017, and exonerated in 2020, after the California Supreme Court ruled that police and prosecutors were applying an overly broad definition of a locking blade. In effect, Martin had committed no crime at all. Continue reading >>>
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