News / Human Rights

US prisoner exonerations hit record last year: Report

Wednesday, 28 January 2015 11:05 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 28 January 2015 2:26 PM ]

An unprecedented 125 exonerations were recorded in the US last year, a new report says.

An unprecedented number of people in the United States were cleared of their crimes in 2014 because of wrongful convictions, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The National Registry of Exonerations said 125 people falsely convicted of crimes were absolved from guilt last year, the most exonerations in US history.

The figure represents a 37 percent increase from 2013, the year with the previous highest total.

Prosecutors and police departments initiated or cooperated in reversing at least 67 wrongful convictions, also a record number, according to the report.

Texas had the most exonerations with 39. New York was second with 17. In Texas, no crime occurred in almost half of all the exoneration cases.

"I think there is a sea change in the thinking related to the fallibility of the criminal justice system,'' said University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, co-founder of the registry and author of the report.

"It turns out that (wrongful conviction) is a much more common problem than everybody realizes,'' he said.

"People are coming to the understanding that wrongful convictions are not only destroying the lives of people who have been wrongly punished, but they also are undermining the integrity of the criminal justice system,'' said Kings County District Attorney Kenneth Thompson.

On Friday, an African-American man, who spent nearly 40 years behind bars in North Carolina for two murders he did not commit, was freed. Joseph Sledge was wrongfully convicted in the 1976 stabbing deaths of a mother and her adult daughter. He is now 70 years old.

In another case, a Chicago judge dismissed charges against Alstory Simon after 15 years in prison for a double murder. Another man, Anthony Porter, had been convicted of the same crime in 1983 and sentenced to death but was released after Simon's confession.

AHT/AGB

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