The history of race and wrongful convictions is a long and complicated one, marked by systemic racism and biases within the criminal justice system. These issues have resulted in a disproportionate number of people of color being wrongfully convicted.
A 2022 study from the National Registry of Exonerations examined all 3248 exonerations in the database at that time and found that while Black people are 13.6% of the American population they make up 53% of the exonerations listed in the National Registry. “Judging from exonerations, innocent Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes.”
The report examined racial disparities in the three types of crime that produce the largest numbers of exonerations: murder, sexual assault, and drug crimes, and found that:
- Black people who are convicted of murder are about 80% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers.
- On average Black murder exonerees spent three years longer in prison before release than white murder exonerees.
- Innocent Black people are almost eight times more likely than white people to be falsely convicted of rape.
- Black sexual assault exonerees received much longer prison sentences than white sexual assault exonerees, and spent, on average, more than four years longer in prison before exoneration.
- Sixty-nine percent of drug crime exonerees are Black and 16% are white. That means that innocent Black people are 19 times more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent whites, despite the fact that white and Black Americans use illegal drugs at similar rates.
The reasons behind these disparities are numerous and complex, and vary quite a bit between types of crime. For instance, the high level of disparity seen in drug crimes can be directly tied to racial profiling. “Because drug crimes are almost never reported to police,” researchers said, “the police choose who to pursue for drug offenses—and they choose to stop, search and arrest Black people several times more often than whites.”
Meanwhile, some of the disparity in sexual assault cases can be explained by the known problem of the cross race effect, whereby same-race faces are recognized more accurately than cross-race faces. “Despite the fact that cross-race crime accounts for a very small percentage of crimes in the United States, roughly 36% of the wrongful convictions that have been later overturned due to the introduction of new DNA evidence were originally prosecuted on the basis of cross-race eyewitness misidentifications.” (Scheck, Neufeld, & Dwyer, 2003).
The common thread across all 3 types of crime examined is that many of these wrongful convictions were influenced by racial discrimination. Whether it’s the more subtle effects of unconscious bias and institutional discrimination or explicit racism and blatant misconduct, the effects all coalesce into a system in which there is an undue and unfair impact on innocent Black people.
In recent years, there have been efforts to address — or at least, make more visible — some of the systemic biases and inequalities within the criminal justice system. Reforms such as eyewitness identification procedures, the use of body cameras, and increased funding for public defender offices have been implemented in some states. These reforms may not stop injustices against innocent Black people, but without them, communities would have even fewer options to hold police accountable. Conviction Integrity Units have been particularly useful at unearthing many of these miscarriages of justice and bringing them to light.
However, we have more work to do. It is crucial that we work to implement reforms that address the implicit bias, racial profiling, and misconduct within the system that polices and prosecutes Black communities.
Only then can we claim to have a system that values justice instead of prejudice and expediency.
Featured photo by Emiliano Bar on Unsplash