THE FIRST 1,600 EXONERATIONS
1. Background
The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the University of Michigan Law School. It
was launched in May 2012. At that time the Registry listed 891 cases.
Three years later, the Registry includes more than 1,600 exonerations, an increase of more than700, or about 80%.
The Registry changes constantly. We add exonerations every week. We have removed a few
cases after learning that they do not in fact meet our criteria. And we constantly update
summaries of cases that are already listed to add missing data and correct errors, based on ourown research and on information from others.
We also prepare periodic reports on the cases in the Registry. Given the nature of our work, eachsuch report is a snapshot of the data on a particular date. For current information on any case andto view the most recent cases, patterns and summaries, please consult the Registry website.
The first was released when the Registry was launched in May 2012: Exonerations in the UnitedStates, 1989-2012 (the Exoneration Report). It describes the 873 exonerations that we had
identified and coded by March 1, 2012. That report also includes a description of 12 “groupexonerations” – sets of cases in which corrupt police officers systematically framed innocent
defendants for non-existent crimes, mostly possession of illegal drugs or guns. Those groupexonerations included at least 1,100 additional exonerated criminal defendants who are not listed
in the Registry itself.
This is our fourth report summarizing all of the cases in the Registry at a particular point in time.
In April 2013 we released a 2012 Update that described the status of the Registry as of the end of
2012; in February 2014 we released Exonerations in 2013 which included a description of thestatus of the Registry as of the end of 2013. 1 This report fills the same function for the first 1,600
exonerations in the Registry, those posted as of May 18, 2015. We plan to continue to issue thesereports in years to come.

1

In January 2015 we released a report entitled Exonerations in 2014, but it was limited to a description of known
exonerations that occurred in calendar year 2014.
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2. The First 1,600 Exonerations in the Registry
A. Who's Been Exonerated, and by What Process
Of the 1,600 individual exonerations from January 1989 through May 18, 2015:
•
•

•

•
•
•
•

91% were men (1,461/1,600) and 9% were women (147/1,600). 2
By race:o 47% were black (750/1,600),
o 40% were white (641/1,600),
o 11% were Hispanic (181/1,600), ando 2% were Native American, Asian or Other (28/1,600).
13% pled guilty (209/1,600) and the rest were convicted at trial, 79% by juries(1,262/1,600) and 7% by judges (114/1,600). In 1% (15/1,600), we don’t knowwhether the trial conviction was by a jury or judge.
25% were cleared at least in part with the help of DNA evidence (398/1,600).
75% were cleared without DNA evidence (1,202/1,600).
Almost all had been in prison for years; most for more than 7 years.
As a group, the defendants have spent more than 14,750 years in prison for crimes forwhich they should not have been convicted – an average of 9 years and 3 months
each. 3As a procedural matter, these exonerations occurred in several ways. (Some defendants wereexonerated more than once, in different ways – for example by a dismissal in 1998, followed bya pardon in 2003.):
Pardons: In 112 cases, governors (or in some states, other government officers or
bodies) issued pardons based on evidence of the defendants’ innocence, including 43
cases of defendants whose charges had previously been dismissed, and three who had
been acquitted on retrial by a jury or a judge. 4
Dismissals: In 1,240 cases, criminal charges were dismissed by courts, generally on
motion by the prosecution, after new evidence of innocence emerged (this is not counting
dismissals in which the defendant was later pardoned or received a certificate of
innocence).
2

Because of this lopsided distribution, we generally refer to exonerated defendants using male pronouns.

3This is a conservative estimate of the direct consequences of these wrongful convictions. We have not counted
time spent in custody before conviction. Nor have we included time spent on probation or parole, or time on bail orother forms of supervised release pending trial, retrial, or dismissal, even though all of these conditions involve
restrictions on liberty – some mild, some onerous.

4

Under the Texas Wrongful Imprisonment Act (the “Tim Cole Act”), for example, an exonerated defendant may
need a pardon even after a dismissal or an acquittal in order to be eligible for compensation for wrongfulincarceration. See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE ANN. § 103.001 (2011).

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Acquittals: In 201 cases, the defendants whose convictions were vacated on review wereacquitted on retrial on the basis of newly presented evidence of innocence, mostly by
juries (181 cases), occasionally by judges (20 cases).
Certificates of Innocence: In a small but growing number of cases – 49 to date – courts
have issued “certificates of innocence,” “declarations of wrongful imprisonment,” orsimilar judgments of innocence. 5 (In one case, the defendant also received an executive
pardon.)Posthumous Exonerations: Thirteen defendants received posthumous exonerations;
three of them also received judicial declarations of innocence, and one of those threereceived an executive pardon as well.
Overall, 32% of known exonerations in the United States since 1989 included cooperation by
police or prosecutors or both (515/1,600). As we have mentioned in previous reports, thenumber and proportion of such cases appears to be increasing over time. 6

B. Exonerations by Crime
The great majority of known exonerations in the first 1,600 exonerations are homicide cases—
44% (708/1,600)—and sexual assault cases—28% (449/1,600) (including both child sex abuse
and adult sexual assaults). But the proportion of exonerations in cases that do not involve
homicide, rape or child sex abuse continues to climb as we learn about more exonerations. It was
4% in the most comprehensive national report on exonerations published before the advent of theRegistry, 7 in 2005; 17% in the Exoneration Report; and 28% in this report. See Table 1 for acomplete breakdown of exonerations by crime.

5

See, e.g., 735 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/2-702 (2012) (detailing Illinois’s procedure for filing a petition for a certificate of
innocence).
6

The numbers of exonerations by year and official cooperation are tabulated below:

Exonerations with Prosecutor or Police Cooperation (PPC) Over Time‘89 ‘90 ‘91 ‘92 ‘93 ‘94 ‘95 ‘96 ‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 ‘08 ‘09 ‘10 ‘11 ‘12 '13 ‘14 '15 TOTAL
PPC cases 87
8 10 8
7 11 977
7 20 20 21 17 15 18 19 22 26 25 21 14 52 36 68 33 516
All Cases 22 27 38 35 34 31 36 46 46 33 50 73 86 57 77 57 60 63 70 63 89 71 70 92 91 128 55 1,600% PPC 36% 26% 21% 29% 24% 23% 31% 20% 15% 21% 14% 27% 23% 37% 22% 26% 30% 30% 31% 41% 28% 30% 20% 57% 40% 53% 60% 32%
7

Samuel R. Gross et al., Exonerations in the United States, 1989 Through 2003, 95 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY
523 at 529 Table 1 (2005).
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Table 1: Exonerations by Crime, 1989 – 2015
CRIME
Homicide

44%

(709)

Murder42%(675)

Death sentences
Other murder convictions

(111)
(564)

Manslaughter

2%

(34)

Sexual Assaults

28%

(449)

Sexual assault on an adultChild sex abuse

17%
11%

(272)

Other Crimes of Violence

13%

(214)

6%
2%
3%
0.8%
0.6%
0.4%
0.6%

(92)

14%

(228)

8%
2%
0.6%
0.7%
0.8%
0.4%
0.5%
0.3%
0.1%

(126)

100%

(1,600)Robbery
Attempted murder
Assault
Arson
KidnappingChild & Dependent Adult Abuse
Other Violent Felonies

Non-Violent Crimes
Drug crimes
Tax/Fraud/Bribery & Corruption
Gun Possession
Theft/Stolen Property
Solicitation/Conspiracy
Sex Offender Registration
Burglary/Unlawful Entry
Immigration
MiscellaneousTOTAL

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7%
35%

(177)

(32)
(51)
(13)
(10)
(7)
(9)

(27)
(10)
(11)
(13)
(7)
(8)
(4)
(22)

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C. Exonerations over Time
There was a rapid increase in the annual total of known exonerations at the beginning of theperiod we cover, from 22 in 1989 to 73 in 2000. After that we see an uneven plateau through2011, with annual totals from 57 through 86, followed by three record high years since 2012,
including a sharp spike up to 128 in 2014. Since 1989, known exonerations have averaged 61 ayear. From 2000 through 2014 the annual total has averaged 76.
Since 2005, the number of DNA exonerations has been essentially flat, averaging 22 a year,
while the number of non-DNA exonerations has nearly tripled and averages 58 a year. Overall,
the proportion of exonerations based on DNA has dropped from 37% of those known on March
1, 2012 to 25% of the 1,600 exonerations in the Registry. 8 See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Number of DNA and Non-DNA Exonerations by Year8

The actual numbers of exonerations by year and basis are tabulated below:

BASIS ‘89 ‘90
DNA
2
1
Other 20 26
TOTAL 22 27

‘91
3
35
38

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‘92
5
30
35

‘93
6
28
34

‘94
9
22
31

‘95
10
26
36

‘96
17
29
46

‘97
8
38
46

‘98
4
29
33

‘99
13
37
50

‘00
15
58
73

‘01
21
65
86

‘02
23
34
57

‘03
23
54
77

‘04
13
44
57

‘05
23
37
60

‘06
23
40
63

‘07
21
49
70

‘08 ‘09
19 29
44 60
63 89

‘10
22
49
71

‘11 ‘12
21 20
49 72
70 92

'13 '14 ‘15
18 22 773 106 48
91 128 55

TOTAL
398 25%
1,202 75%
1,600 100%

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D. DNA and Non-DNA Cases, and Time to Exoneration
DNA is present in 69% of sexual assault exonerations with adult victims. Consequently, nearly
half of all DNA exonerations – 47% – are adult sexual assault cases (189/398). As we havenoted previously, the proportion of DNA cases has dropped since March 2012 as we continue toidentify other less well known exonerations. This drop has occurred across all categories ofcrime, but has been particularly sharp for sexual assaults on adults, where the proportion ofexonerations with DNA evidence dropped from 84% to 69%. See Table 2. 9 One importantreason is that in recent years DNA testing in rape cases is routinely done before trial. As a result,
78% of rape exonerees convicted before 2000 were exonerated by DNA evidence (180/232), but
80% of rape exonerees convicted after 2000 were exonerated without DNA (32/40).
Table 2: Proportion of Exonerations Basedon DNA, by Category of Crime
Homicide23% (163/709)

All Sexual Assaults

48% (216/449)

Sexual Assault on an adult69%(189/272)

Child sex abuse

15%(26/177)

Other Crimes of Violence

9% (19/214)

Drug and Property Crimes

0% (1/228)
25% (398/1,600)

ALL CASES

For exonerations in the past few years, the number of DNA exonerations in murder cases has
exceeded the number in rape cases. From 1989 through 2007, 65% of DNA exonerations wererape cases (155/240); since 2008, that proportion has dropped to 38% (61/158). See Figure 2.

9For comparison, here is the same table as it appeared in the Exoneration Report that was released in May 2012:
Proportion of Exonerations Basedon DNA, by Category of Crime
Homicide
All Sexual Assaults
Sexual Assault on an adultChild sex abuse
Other Crimes of Violence

30% (123/416)
63% (193/305)
84% (170/203)
23% (23/102)
10% (9/94)

Drug and Property Crimes

0% (0/58)

ALL CASES

37% (325/873)

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Figure 2: DNA Exonerations by Crime, Over TimeThe exonerations in the Registry are classified by the most serious crime for which the defendant
was convicted and later exonerated. By this measure, rape standing alone has not been the mostcommon crime for DNA exonerations over the past several years. But rape remains as anelement in almost two thirds of DNA exonerations. In 44% of the DNA homicide exonerations inour data (72/162), the defendant was also convicted of a sexual assault, and in another 19% there
was a rape for which the defendant was not convicted, usually because it was not charged(30/162). In other words, DNA exonerations are increasingly about rape-murder rather than rape
alone.
The main reason for this shift is probably the aging pool of potential DNA exonerations. The
average time from conviction to exoneration by DNA has increased from 6 years in 1993 to morethan 20 years in 2015. See Figure 3. This should be no surprise. Nowadays, 26 years after the
first DNA exonerations, probative DNA evidence in a major felony prosecution is generally
tested before trial. This has become increasingly true over the past 20 years. As a result, DNA
exonerations are increasingly dominated by defendants who were convicted 20 to 30 years ago or
longer. There are no doubt many innocent rape defendants who were convicted 20 years ago or
longer, but unless they were convicted of murder as well as rape, almost all were released fromprison years or decades ago. Murder defendants are far more likely to remain in prison decades
after conviction and they and their supporters are more likely to continue to press for theirrelease.

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Figure 3: Time to Exoneration by Factual Basis (Five-Year Moving Average 10)

DNA has been used in a handful of robbery and attempted murder exonerations. In the past
several years, a lot of attention has focused on the potential of DNA as an investigative tool for
property crimes, from burglary to auto theft. While DNA may be gaining a foothold in pretrial
investigations of such cases, it seems to have had little impact on reinvestigating property crimes
after conviction, at least so far.

E. Exonerations by Race and Sex
Black defendants continue to be over-represented among exonerees, particularly in sexualassault, robbery and drug cases. (The proportion of black exonerees is also high in attempted
murder cases(72%), but there are only 32 such cases in the data.) Overall, the proportion of
black exonerees has dropped a bit from the Exoneration Report, from 50% to 47%, withcorresponding drops across most crime categories. See Table 3.

10

A “moving average” is a technique for smoothing a graph with values that go up and down a great deal in the
short run. In this case, the “five-year moving average” means that each point on the graph is the average of the value
for the year indicated and the preceding four years (except in the first four years, 1989-92, when it is the average ofthe indicated year and however many earlier years are included in the data).
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Table 3. Exonerations by Race Of Defendant and Type of Crime*
White

Black

Hispanic

Other

TOTAL

39%

48%

12%

1%

100%

6%

0%

100%

Homicide(709)
Sexual Assault(272)Child Sex Abuse(177)
Attempted Murder(32)
Robbery
(92)

63%

24%

11%

2%

100%

13%

72%

13%

3%

100%

22%

60%

15%

3%

100%

Other Violent
Crimes (90)

48%

31%

13%

8%

100%

Drug Crime
(126)

31%

52%

16%

2%

100%

Other Non-Violent
Crimes (102)

62%

25%

12%

1%

100%

ALL CRIMES (1,600)

40%

47%

11%

2%

100%

32%

61%

It’s no surprise that black defendants are heavily overrepresented among exonerees: they areheavily overrepresented among those arrested and imprisoned for violent crimes and drug
crimes. For some crimes, however, the disproportions we see are greater than what one would
expect.
In 2008, for example, 38% of state and federal prisoners were black. 11 Using that as a benchmark, black exonerees, at 47%, are somewhat overrepresented among all exonerees – but thisdisparity is unevenly distributed. In 2008, 43% of homicide prisoners were black, only slightly
fewer than the 48% of homicide exonerees who were black. For robbery, the difference is a bit
greater: 52% of prisoners and 60% of exonerees were black; for drug crimes, 45% of prisoners
and 52% of exonerees were black. Finally, for sexual assault, the difference is huge: 25% ofprisoners, but 61% of exonerees were black. On the other hand, 63% of child sex abuseexonerations and 62% of exonerations for non-violent crimes other than drugs had whitedefendants.
Fewer than 9% of known exonerations involved female defendants (147/1,600). The crimes forwhich female exonerees were convicted were generally similar to those for male exonerees, withtwo conspicuous exceptions. Female exonerees were more likely than males to have been
convicted of child sex abuse, 18% to 10%. At the same time, 19% of the men were convicted ofadult sexual assault, but not a single woman. See Table 4.
11

Heather C. West & William J. Sabol, Prisoners in 2009, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS BULLETIN(2010), available at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2232.

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Table 4: Exonerations by Genderand Crime
MALE

FEMALE(1454)(147)

Homicide45%

41%

Sexual Assault

19%-Child Sex Abuse

10%

18%

-

3%

Other Crimes of Violence

13%

8%

Non-Violent Crimes

13%

29%

TOTAL

100%

100%

CRIME

Child Abuse

In general, women are heavily concentrated among exonerations in which the victims werechildren and in cases in which no crime was committed (as opposed to the great majority ofcases, in which there was a crime but someone else did it). Overall, 64% of the female exonerees(94/147) were convicted of crimes that never occurred – mostly child sex abuse, homicide anddrug crimes– but only 24% of the men were convicted in no-crime cases (343/1,454). Overall,
33% of female exonerees were convicted of violent crimes against children 11 years old or
younger (48/146), mostly homicide and child sex abuse, compared to 13% of male exonerees(185/1,454).

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F. Causes of False Convictions
For all exonerations, the most common causal factors that we have identified are: perjury or false
accusation (55%); official misconduct (45%); and mistaken eyewitness identification (34%). See
Table 5.
Table 5: Exonerations by Crime and Contributing Factors(N=1,600)
Mistaken Witness
Identification

Perjury or False
Accusation

False
Confession

False or Misleading
Forensic Evidence

Official
Misconduct

Homicide
(709)

24%

67%

21%

23%

60%

SexualAssault (272)

72%

34%

8%

32%

23%

Child Sex
Abuse (177)

17%

80%

7%

23%

44%

Robbery
(92)

83%

22%

2%

5%

30%

Other Violent
Crimes (122)

42%

51%

8%

12%

44%

Non-Violent
Crimes (228)

6%

41%

3%

25%

36%

ALL CASES(1,600)

34%

55%

13%

23%

45%

The proportions in Table 5 are generally similar to those in the Exoneration Report in May 2012,
except that the percentage of cases with mistaken witness identifications has decreased (from
43% to 34%), and the percentages of cases with perjury or false accusations and with official
misconduct have increased (from 51% to 55% and from 42% to 45%, respectively.) In addition,
the percentage of non-violent crimes with false or misleading forensic evidence has jumped from
3% to 25%, and official misconduct in those cases has dropped from 55% to 36%.
We noted in the Exoneration Report that the proportion of exonerations with mistaken
eyewitness identifications is lower than previous reports, primarily because we have done a more
careful job than before in separating eyewitness errors and eyewitness lies. That remains true.
The other main finding of the Exoneration Report in this regard was that, as best we can tell fromknown exonerations, false conviction is not one pathology with a single set of contributing risk
factors but a set of several different problems with different causal structures depending on thecrime. That remains true. For example:

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•

•

•

For homicide exonerations, the leading cause of false conviction is perjury or false
accusations, mostly deliberate false identifications. Homicide cases also include a highrate of official misconduct, and 74% of all false confessions in the database.
The great majority of sexual assault and robbery exonerations include mistaken
eyewitness identifications, mostly by the victims. Many sexual assault cases also include
bad forensic evidence.
Child sex abuse exonerations, by contrast, primarily involve false testimony by victims
who fabricated crimes that never occurred at all.

F. Exonerations by Jurisdiction
The first 1,600 exonerations in the Registry come from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, theCommonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, at least 26 federal districts and the military. In May 2012,
we reported that the top ten states in numbers of exonerations were, in descending order: Illinois,
New York, Texas, California, Michigan, Louisiana, Florida, Ohio, Massachusetts andPennsylvania. Three reports later, these same ten states lead the count but their order haschanged, and Wisconsin has been added as a tie for the tenth position. See Table 6.
Table 6: Exonerations by State, Top Ten
Exoneration Report

First 1,600 Exonerations

January 1989–February
2011

January 1989–May18, 2015

(N = 873)(N =1,600)

1. Illinois

101

1. Texas

205

2. New York88

2. New York189

3. Texas84

3. California

153

4. California

79

4. Illinois

151[Federal

39][Federal84]

5. Michigan

35

5. Michigan

55

6. Louisiana

34

6. Florida

54

7. Florida

32

7. Ohio53

8. Ohio28

8. Pennsylvania

52

9. Massachusetts

27

9. Louisiana

45

10. Pennsylvania

27

10. Massachusetts (tie)40

10. Wisconsin (tie)40

The top four states have not changed, but their order has been rearranged three times: (1) From
the first report to the second, California added 40 cases – 50% of its total – and went from fourth

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place to first. (2) From the second report to the third, New York added 48 cases, and also moved
from fourth place to first.
These rapid changes do not reflect bumper crops of recent exonerations in California and New
York. Only 5 of the 40 California exonerations added from March through December 2012
occurred in that time span, and only 8 of the 48 exonerations added in New York in 2013
occurred in that year.
The main reason for the rapid increases in the number exonerations in California and later in
New York is the nature of the searches we have been conducting. In 2012, we concentrated oursearch for past exonerations on California because it is the most populous state in the union andhad a comparatively low per capita exoneration rate, so we thought we might find many cases we
did not know about. In 2013, we devoted more attention to New York.
(3) For this report, Texas added 73 cases and went from third place to first.
This change does reflect a very high number of recent exonerations in Texas, 40 in 2014 and 20
through May of 2015. Forty-eight of these cases were in Harris County (Houston) and all but oneof them were exonerations of defendants who pled guilty to drug crimes and were later
exonerated when laboratory tests performed on the substances seized from them found no illegal
drugs. Almost all these exoneration were obtained by the Harris County District Attorney’s Post
Conviction Review Section; we discuss that program in detail in our last report, Exonerations in
2014.
The numbers of exonerations in Table 6 are driven in part by population. The top four states –California, Texas, New York and Illinois – are, in that order, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th mostpopulous; and the sixth ranked state in number of exonerations, Florida, is 4th in population.

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Table 7 displays rates of exonerations per capita for the ten states with the largest numbers ofexonerations; Table 8 lists the ten states with the highest per capita rates. 12 Three of the states inthe top four on Table 7 make the list in Table 8. Illinois and New York are in the top three inexonerations per capita, as they were in prior reports, and Texas is ranked 8th. On the other hand,
California, the most populous state, has a per capita rate of exonerations of 0.79, below thestandardized national average of 1.
Table 7: Number of Exonerations,
Top Ten States

Table 8: Exonerations Per Capita,
Top Ten States

Rate per

STATE

Number of
Capita,Exonerations Standardized

STATE

Rate per Capita,
Standardized

Number of
Exonerations

1. Texas

205

1.52

1. Illinois

2.34

151

2. New York

189

1.94

2. Louisiana

1.93

45

3. California

153

0.79

3. New York

1.91

189

4. Illinois

151

2.34

4. Texas

1.52

205

5. Michigan

55

1.116

5. Oklahoma

1.44

28

6. Florida

54

0.54

6. Wisconsin

1.38

40

7. Ohio53

0.93

7. Massachusetts

1.18

40

8. Pennsylvania

52

0.81

8. Missouri

1.12

34

9. Louisiana

45

1.93

9. Michigan

1.11

55

10. Massachusetts (tie)

40

1.18

10. Washington

1.04

37

10. Wisconsin (tie)

40

1.38

NATION

1.00

1281

1,600

1.00

NATION12

The rates of exonerations per capita reported in Tables 8 through 11 are standardized. The raw number is divided
by the national average (0.502 per 100,000). Thus the standardized rate per capita for the nation as a whole is 1.00,
by definition; the rate for Illinois, for example, means that Illinois had 2.34 times more exonerations per capita than
the national average; and the rate for Florida means that Florida had 0.54 times the national average of exonerations
per capita. All rankings are based on 2014 data from the United States Census Bureau, which reports a national
population of 318,857,056. See http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/download_data.html.

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Criminal prosecutions in the United States are almost always handled by county rather than stateauthorities. There are 3,143 counties in the United States; we know of exonerations in 478 ofthem. In Table 9 we display the top 10 counties in the country by number of exonerations. In
Table 10 we show the top counties in exonerations per capita, for counties with populations over
300,000. 13 For the purpose of this analysis, we treat the District of Columbia as a county.
Table 9: Number of Exonerations
Top Ten Counties

Table 10: Exonerations Per Capita, Top Ten
Counties with Population over 300,000
Rate perCapita,Number ofStandardized Exonerations

Rate perCountyNumber of
Capita,Exonerations Standardized

County1. Cook, IL(Chicago)

115

4.37

1. Orleans Parish, LA(New Orleans)

9.33

18

2. Harris, TX(Houston)

75

3.37

2. Suffolk, MA(Boston)

5.71

22

3. Los Angeles, CA

56

1.10

3. Kern, CA

5.47

24

4. Dallas, TX

52

4.11

4. Jefferson Parish, LA

5.03

11

5. Kings, NY(Brooklyn)

47

3.57

5. Bronx, NY

4.99

36

6. Bronx, NY

36

4.99

6. District of Columbia

4.54

15

7. New York NY(Manhattan)

27

3.29

7. Cook, IL(Chicago)

4.37

115

8. Wayne, MI(Detroit)

25

2.82

8. Dallas, TX

4.11

52

9. Kern, CA

24

5.47

9. Kings, NY(Brooklyn)

3.57

47

10. Suffolk, MA(Boston)22

5.71

10. Harris, TX(Houston)

3.37

75

1,600

1.00

NATION

1.00

1,600

NATIONA few large and medium sized counties have exoneration rates per capita 5 to 10 times thenational average: Orleans Parish, Louisiana; Suffolk County, Massachusetts; Kern County,
California; and Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. The three most populous counties in the country –Cook County, Illinois; Harris County, Texas; and Los Angeles, California – have moreexonerations each than all but a few states (although their order by population is the reverse ofthat by number of exonerations).

13

If we included smaller counties, the list would consist entirely of counties with fewer than 100,000 people that
happened to have a single exoneration or a group of several. See note 12, above, for a description the standardized
rate of exonerations per capita. For the purpose of this analysis, we treat the District of Columbia as a county.

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NATIONAL REGISTRY OF EXONERATIONSUNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LAW SCHOOL
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN 48109

On the other hand, there are no known exonerations at all in nearly 90% of all counties in the
United States, including some with large populations. Table 11 lists the 7 counties with morethan 900,000 people but no known exonerations, or just one.
Table 11: Counties with More than 900,000
People and No More than One Exoneration
Population

Number of
Exonerations

San Bernardino, CA

2,112,619

0Fairfax, VA

1,137,538

1

Wake, NC

998,6911

Honolulu, HI

991,7880Pinellas, FL

938,098

1

Bergen, NJ

933,5720Prince George's, MD

904,430

1CountyWe believe these numbers reflect our ignorance of exonerations that have occurred. For example,
in southern California, Orange County and San Diego County each with about 3 million people,
have 12 and 14 known exonerations respectively – while the adjoining county of San
Bernardino, with more than 2 million people, has no known exonerations. It’s possible that noexonerations have occurred in San Bernardino County over the past 26 years, but we think it’smore likely that there have been at least several that we have not yet learned about.
This pattern is changing. The Exoneration Report, based on data from March 2012, listed 16
large counties with no more than one exoneration. We’re now down to 7. Overall, the number ofcounties with known exonerations has increased by about 60%, from 301 in March of 2012 to478. We expect that pattern to continue as we continue to learn about more cases from years
past.
For current data, it is possible to sort exonerations by county on the Summary View page of our
website and obtain the names of exonerees in each county.

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NATIONAL REGISTRY OF EXONERATIONSUNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LAW SCHOOL
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN 48109