US lets off 2 500 convicted falsely

– About 2 500 people have been exonerated of serious crimes after being falsely convicted over the past 30 years in the United States.

According to a new study out yesterday, in about half their cases, police and prosecutors withheld evidence that would have exculpated them.

The study by the National Registry of Exonerations found that evidence that would have cleared the defendant was withheld in 61% of erroneous murder convictions.

And more broadly, 72% of exoneration cases in which the defendant was sentenced to death involved misconduct by police and prosecutors.

“Misconduct is generally more common the more extreme the violence,” the study says.

The report comes from a joint project of University of California-Irvine, the University of Michigan law school and Michigan State University law school.

It cites a broad range of police and prosecutor misconduct that contributes to unjust convictions: using questionable techniques to force false confessions, encouraging or coercing witnesses to provide evidence against a defendant; fabricating evidence; and prosecutors skirting the law.

African-Americans were slightly more likely than whites to be victims of misconduct leading to false convictions.

But in some types of crime, blacks were far more often falsely convicted. In drug cases, blacks were 12 times more likely than whites to be falsely convicted.

Yet whites were also frequent victims, especially in so-called white-collar crimes involving corruption and fraud.