25 years of wrongful convictions: By the numbers

Of the 400 million serious criminal cases prosecutors have handled since 1989, at least 2,061 of them were wrongful convictions, according to a new report.

(Image credit: John Zich/CORBIS)

last updated 8 January 2015

Last week, researchers at Columbia University released a detailed, book-length account of how Texas probably executed an innocent man, Carlos DeLuna, in 1989. This week, a new report from Northwestern University and the University of Michigan "picks up where the DeLuna case left off," says Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic. Focusing on the big picture, researchers from the two schools launched the first-ever National Registry of Exonerations, and their first report takes a stab at cobbling together hard-to-find, rarely publicized stories and statistics about Americans who've been cleared of crimes for which they were convicted but didn't commit. What they found: More than 2,000 people were wrongfully convicted of crimes since 1989. "If that were the extent of the problem we would be encouraged by these numbers," says Michigan law professor Samuel R. Gross. But sadly, it's just the tip of the iceberg. One hope of the registry is to find out where the system messes up, so more innocent people don't end up in jail. Here's a look at some of the key findings, by the numbers:

2,061