One man in Kansas and two others in Missouri walked out of prisons in 2023 after spending years behind bars for crimes they didn't commit. They joined 150 people who were exonerated nationwide — and a new report predicts that number will grow in the future.
According to a just-released study from the National Registry of Exonerations, “official misconduct” of police, prosecutors or others in the system was the top reason for 118, or 77%, of the 2023 exonerations. A total of 2,230 years were lost to wrongful imprisonment, the report said.
Of the people wrongfully convicted, 84% were people of color, according to the National Registry.
Innocence organizations and conviction integrity units played a large role in the increase, the report said; they were responsible for 63%, or 67 exonerations, in 2023.
The National Registry of Exonerations is a collaborative project of three universities. It provides details of known exonerations in the U.S. since 1989.
In Kansas, Christopher Lyman, who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 2013 in a “shaken baby” case in Geary County, had his case dismissed in July after spending ten years in prison. In Missouri, Lamont Campbell was released in January after a judge in St. Louis overturned the murder conviction that sent him to prison for 12 years. A St. Louis judge freed Lamar Johnson in February after Johnson spent nearly 30 years in prison for the murder of a friend.
In all, the registry grew by 207 in 2023, because 53 exonerations from years past were also recorded. As of the end of last month, the National Registry of Exonerations has recorded 3,478 since 1989, the first year the number was tracked.
Total compensation paid by state and local governments to all exonerees has nearly doubled since 2019 and now exceeds $4 billion, according to Jeff Gutman, a George Washington University Law School professor and special contributor to the registry.
The total number of exonerations will grow quickly in the next few years, Gutman said.
“The number of states that pay compensation to exonerees is growing, many exonerees have claims that are still pending, and we’ll keep seeing more exonerations of innocent people who spent decades in prison, probably at an accelerating rate,” Gutman said.
In addition to “official misconduct,” other reasons for the exonerations include 59 cases of ineffectual counsel; 50 cases of mistaken witness identification; 43 instances of false or misleading forensic evidence; and 32 false confessions, the report said.
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