The National Registry of Exonerations recently released its 2014 exoneration report. The Registry provides detailed information of all known exonerations, a case in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all the charges, and as of today there are 1,535 exonerations recorded in the Registry from 1989.
Since it was created in 2012, the exoneration report has shown a balance between numbers of exonerations from up and down. But according to the report, “2014 was a record breaking year for exonerations in the United States, by a large margin.” Exoneration is a The Registry recorded 125 exonerations in 2014.” That’s the highest total since 91 exonerations in 2012.
They are often made because of the impact of prosecutorial Conviction Integrity Units as a prosecutor admits to making a mistake on their case. The basic patterns of the 2014 exonerations were in 27 states across the nation. The states with the most exonerations in 2014 were Texas, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Louisiana, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee with Texas having highest number of exoneration where at least 39 people who were wrongly convicted of their crimes.
Exoneration can also occur if there is new evidence if DNA that can link another possible defendant to the crime and prove perjury.
In 2014 48% of the exonerations were non-homicide non-sex crime while 38% were homicide and 31% were drug crimes.
The Registry also includes illustrative exonerations in 2014, which displays seven cases and the facts behind the defendants’ cases.
The project was founded in 2012 by the University of Michigan Law School in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.
