During Black History Month, it's important to acknowledge both the progress that’s been made towards equality and the work that still needs to be done. At the Innocence Project, we clearly see the flaws in our criminal legal system. Racial discrimination and bias persist at every level of the system — from arrests to convictions to exonerations — and are at the heart of too many wrongful conviction cases.
Here are just a few of the statistics we should all be aware of:
53%
More than half of death row exonerees are Black.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, of the 174 people exonerated from death row since 1973, about 53% are Black. This stems from a shameful history of lynching, and even today, the states that sentence the most people to death are those that once carried out the most lynchings.
7x
Innocent Black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than innocent white people.
In particular, Black people are more likely to be wrongly convicted of murder when the victim is white. Approximately 31% of Black people exonerated from murder convictions were wrongly convicted of killing white people, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
22%
Cases of Black people exonerated from wrongful murder convictions are 22% more likely to involve police misconduct than similar cases involving white defendants.
Racial discrimination can play a role in a wrongful conviction case before it even makes it into the courtroom.
The legacy of slavery, racist Jim Crow laws, and hateful lynchings has translated into modern-day mass incarceration and the disproportionate imprisonment of Black people.
The Innocence Project works to help turn the tide of racial injustice in our criminal legal system every day. Thank you for your support of this important work.
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
