In yet another blow to the U.S. criminal justice system’s credibility, the 2023 Annual Report from the National Registry of Exonerations recorded 153 reversals of convictions. Put in perspective, the number amounted to nearly three exonerations per week — a higher number than in previous years in a system that always prides itself on fairness.
A project of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society at the University of California — Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School, and Michigan State University College of Law, the March 18 report detailed the many affronts to justice that plagued many criminal convictions and had turned innocent persons into victims.
“Professional exonerators — Innocence Organizations and Conviction Integrity Units — continued to play essential roles. They were responsible for 97 exonerations, 63% of the total. IOs took part in 67 exonerations, and CIUs helped secure 60 exonerations. IOs and CIUs worked together on 30 exonerations in 2023,” said the report’s executive summary.
The Registry said that since its inception in 1989, the number of years that exonerees have lost to wrongful imprisonment has reached 31,678 years, an average of 9.1 years per exonerated person. The average time from wrongful conviction to exoneration and release has tripled from 6.7 years to 19.8 years, according to the report.
One noticeable point about recent exonerations focused on homicides, the report said. Homicide cases concerned about 80% of exonerations of innocent incarcerated persons who have lost their liberty for more than 25 years. The report optimistically said that such exonerations have increased rapidly from 19 such exonerations from 2011 to 2013 to 91 exonerations from 2021 to 2023.
The report offered two explanations for the phenomenon. The first centered on the checkered police practices of the 1970s to the 1990s. The report spoke of the period having a high rate of homicides with which law enforcement and prosecutors could not keep up, coupled with a tough-on-crime mentality of the public, and a general lack of documenting the danger of convictions of innocent persons. The second explanation centered on the 2020s up to now and the increase in resources to innocence organizations and prosecutorial conviction integrity units.
Compensation paid to exonerees played a prominent part in the report. The authors chose to highlight the mammoth sum of $4 billion paid to exonerees in a boldfaced block quote. The dollar amount came from Professor Jeffrey Gutman of the George Washington Law School, a special contributor at the Registry’s staff, the report said. Professor Gutman calculated the dollar amount from data of 3,222 exonerations.
The most astonishing aspect of the $4 billion lay in its almost doubling jump from $2.2 billion in 2019. The report predicted that the amount would see similar jumps in the coming years, for the number of exonerees has increased and many of them would yet receive a payout. The report said the number of states that provided compensation grew since 2019, which would in increase compensation numbers even more in future.
Compensation used the metric of years lost while incarcerated as its primary variable, the report said. Since wrongful homicide convictions often took the longest time to rectify, compensation amounts ran high, with payouts averaging $4.5 million. Damage done in wrongful non-homicide exonerations paid an average of $1.1 million in compensation, said the report.
In 92% of all exonerations, compensation came from the governments of 38 states that made provisions for such funds. The report said victims of wrongful convictions might resort to civil lawsuits for damages. Cities and counties of conviction paid for claims of misconduct of law enforcement involved in investigations of cases that led to wrongful convictions.
The report featured five exonerees who had collectively spent about 137 years unjustly incarcerated. Glynn Simmons, from Oklahoma, whom law enforcement had victimized by mistaken witness identification, perjury and false accusation, official misconduct, and inadequate legal defense, makes a prime example. He spent behind bars 48 years, one month, and 18 days — “longer than any other exoneree in U.S. history.”
