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To: ponder life
In the last few decades, several hundred men from the prison system have been released via DNA evidence. Most of them, you guessed it, are African Amercan.

Your information appears to be faulty.

DNA to clear 200th person

Convicting an innocent person is "every prosecutor's nightmare," said Joshua Marquis, vice president of the National District Attorneys Association.

The "tiny number" of exonerations suggests that the "epidemic of bad convictions" that Scheck suggests is "fiction," said Marquis, chief prosecutor in Clatsop County, Ore. There were 1,051,000 felony convictions in state courts in 2002, up from 829,300 in 1990, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Miller, 48, was convicted of raping, robbing, assaulting and kidnapping an office worker in a Near North Side parking lot in September 1981.

Miller, who is black, was identified by two parking lot attendants, who were also black. The victim, who was white, could not identify her assailant.

Most people wouldn't call 200 "several hundred." A more thorough compilation of the numbers shows even more discrepancies with your statements.

The Innocence Project

There have been 289 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States.

• The first DNA exoneration took place in 1989.

Exonerations have been won in 35 states; since 2000, there have been 222 exonerations.

• 17 of the 289 people exonerated through DNA served time on death row.

• The average length of time served by exonerees is 13.5 years. The total number of years served is approximately 3,800.

• The average age of exonerees at the time of their wrongful convictions was 27.

Races of the 289 exonerees:

180 African Americans
82 Caucasians
21 Latinos
2 Asian American
4 whose race is unknown

So there have actually been 289, not several hundred, over 23 years, not the last decade, and only 180 of them were African Americans.

69 posted on 04/02/2012 11:25:13 PM PDT by TigersEye (Life is about choices. Your choices. Make good ones.)
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To: Hot Tabasco

Be sure to see post #69.


70 posted on 04/02/2012 11:27:11 PM PDT by TigersEye (Life is about choices. Your choices. Make good ones.)
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To: TigersEye
Thanks for the data. I am aware that those that were exonerated were in the numbers you referenced, i.e., 289. And that the definition of several is greater than "two".

However, I did say "last few decades" and not "last decade" as you claim. You even reposted my comment in italics.

So, I'm not sure if you're trying to catch me with wrong statistics or what. But I do not believe your data contradicted what I said. I mean, if it was 301 instead of 289, would you say the term "several hundred" been misleading? I don't think so. And that wasn't my intent.

My intent, was to show, that proportionate to the people convicted of crimes, African Americans have been wrongfully convicted beyond their proportion in the judicial system. I'm not talking proportion to the population. We all agree, that African Americans have a higher incaceration rate. I'm talking about, of those who are or were incarcerated, those that were wrongly so, a higher percentage are African Americans. I still stand by my statement.

71 posted on 04/03/2012 4:56:58 PM PDT by ponder life
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