By Brandon R. Cottrell 
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

WASHINGTON, D.C., United States – According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 87 people were exonerated in 2013, which is a record amount.  The previous high, 83, was set in 2009, and over 1,200 exonerations have taken place in the United States since 1989, when amounts first began to be recorded.

Samuel Gross, the lead author of the 2013 report, says that the exonerations are “good news because we are more likely to address the problem that caused false conviction in the first place but that these cases . . . are only a small proportion of errors that actually occur [and] most times, they’re never discovered.”

While DNA evidence influenced the exoneration in a large number of cases, as it “has lent credibility to convicts’ claims of innocence in the eyes of the courts and the prosecutors,” many were also influenced by law enforcement.  The 2013 report said that the “police and prosecutors appear to be taking increasingly active roles in reinvestigating possible false convictions, and [are] more responsive to claims of innocence from convicted defendants.”

Of those exonerated, nearly half had been wrongfully convicted of murder.  Most startlingly, however, is that approximately one third of the exonerations involved cases where no crime had even occurred.  In such instances, many of the exonerated plead guilty (or confessed) in exchange for reduced sentences, as they were not willing to risk a lengthier sentence if the case went to trial and they lost.

For example, Nicole Harris, one of the exonerated, was convicted of first-degree murder for the death of her 4-year old son and received a 30-year sentence.  Her conviction was based primarily on a videotaped confession, which was recorded after “an intense 27 hours of police questioning . . . [where] officers threatened her, called her names, pushed her, withheld food and water, and denied her use of the bathroom.”

Additionally, in that case, investigators refused to consider an alternative explanation for the death – that the elastic band from the bed sheet wrapped around his threat as he jumped off his bed pretending to be Spiderman.  Harris, who spent more than 7 years in prison, was exonerated when the prosecutor’s office moved to dismiss the charge, after evidence was introduced that the police had indeed coerced her into confessing.

Though justice was delayed for these 87 individuals, and is likely being delayed to hundreds currently in prison, Rob Warden, executive director of the Center of Wrongful Convictions, has said that “the more we learn about wrongful convictions, the better we’ll be at preventing them, and, of course, at correcting them after the fact as best we can.”

For further information, please see the following:

BBC – Study: Record Number Of US Convicts Cleared In 2013 – 4 Feb. 2014

Huffington Post – A Record Number Of Inmates Were Exonerated Last Year For Crimes They Didn’t Commit – 4 Feb. 2014

Global Post – Wrongful Convictions Overturned At Faster Clip In 2013 – 4 Feb. 2014 

Time U.S. – Record Number of U.S. Prisoners Exonerated in 2013 – 4 Feb. 2014