A record number of Americans were exonerated from wrongful convictions in 2015, according to a report released Wednesday by the University of Michigan Law School's National Registry of Exonerations.
The report said that 149 people falsely convicted of crimes were exonerated last year, more than double the number exonerated in 2011 and the highest total since the group began keeping records in 1989. The previous record was set in 2014 with 139 exonerations.
"There is a growing awareness that false convictions are a substantial, widespread and tragic problem," the report said. "Increasingly, Americans realize that we convict innocent people of crimes on a regular basis."
The exonerations occurred in 29 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and federal courts. Texas, the second-most populous state, had by far the most exonerations, with 54, followed by New York with 17 and Illinois with 13. On average, those who were exonerated in 2015 had spent 14.5 years incarcerated, the report said.
Fifty-eight defendants exonerated had been convicted of homicide - five received death sentences and 19 life sentences - while 47 exonerations were for drug-related convictions. Over two-thirds were minorities and about half were black.
The report also said that a record 27 exonerations were for convictions based on false confessions, including 22 from homicide cases. Further, 44 of the total 58 homicide exonerations involved official misconduct by authorities, 65 involved a person being convicted on a guilty plea and 75 involved one where no crime took place, according to Voice of America.
"The thing that is most troubling to me about these cases is it's clear that for every innocent defendant who is convicted and later exonerated, there are several others who are convicted who are not exonerated because almost all the exoneration depend on a great extent on good fortune, on Lady Luck," said Samuel Gross, report author and professor of law at the University of Michigan, according to CBS News.
"Increasingly, prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys are acknowledging the systemic problem of wrongful convictions. That's a welcome change, but it's just a start. We've only begun to address this problem systematically."
