The first ever academic investigation into the scope and cost of wrongful convictions revealed on Wednesday that California leads the nation in wrongful convictions.The project, California Wrongful Convictions Project, launched by the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Berkeley Law), and Hollway Advisory Services, a criminal justice research firm, announced that their research found that at least 200 wrongful convictions have been thrown out since 1989 in California, costing those convicted more than 1,300 years of freedom and taxpayers $129 million.
According to the group’s release, the “project’s long-term objective is to identify wrongful convictions in California and to quantify their economic impact. The project has defined wrongful convictions to include those where all counts are dismissed by the court or by the prosecutor after conviction, as well as those where the conviction was reversed and the individual was completely acquitted on retrial.”
The findings come about two weeks prior to the November elections, and that will allow voters to decide whether to continue the death penalty.
Proponents for Proposition 34, which would end the state’s death penalty, have argued that more than 100 innocent people have been sentenced to death in the United States and that some have been executed.
Their campaign points to hundreds of innocent people that they believe have been wrongfully convicted of serious crimes in California including Franky Carrillo, one of the featured speakers at the Vanguard’s Death Penalty Event in July. Mr. Carrillo was 16 when he was arrested and wrongly convicted of murder in Los Angeles. It took 20 years to prove his innocence.
Now supporters of Proposition 34 have hard data on the numbers of wrongfully-convicted individuals, and they wasted little time Wednesday utilizing that data.
“This research shows that our criminal justice system makes mistakes more often than we think With 200 wrongful convictions and counting, just since 1989, it is clear that our justice system is deeply flawed.,” said Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin prison, where she presided over four executions.
“We simply don’t know if California has executed an innocent person or how many innocent people are on death row right now. The only way to ensure that we never execute an innocent person is to pass Proposition 34,” she added.
According to the release from the California Wrongful Convictions Project, “In addition to the costs to individuals and their families of life lost behind bars, the direct costs of incarceration and compensation calculated so far total $129 million ($144 million when prison costs are adjusted for inflation).”
“This figure does not yet include the costs of legal representation and court proceedings necessary to overturn the convictions, an amount expected to be substantial, given the multiple trials and years of appeals routinely undertaken by wrongfully convicted individuals.”
The group expects a detailed report will be released in 2013 that will include the full costs of legal representation, court proceedings, and appeals, as well as costs related to confirmed misconduct by prosecutors, government investigators or police. It will also track the reasons why convictions are overturned.
“The project’s final analysis will include the time, money and resources wasted on all cases that were overturned and dismissed due to misconduct and legal errors, including those where innocent people are wrongfully charged,” said Rebecca Silbert, a project director and senior associate at Berkeley Law’s Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy. “We know that there are errors in the system; what has been missing until now is a precise analysis of the financial impact on California.”
The group released a number of critical findings.
First, “California leads the nation in exonerations as defined by the National Registry of Exonerations with 120, surpassing Illinois (110), Texas (100), and New York (100). The National Registry requires a post-conviction showing of new evidence for inclusion.”
The caveat, of course, is that California has a much larger population than any of those states. Nevertheless, the 214 figure that they cite (as opposed to the National Registry) is nearly twice any other state.
They find that since 1989, courts have exonerated or dismissed convictions against 214 Californians. The reasons for these exonerations and dismissals include official misconduct, insufficient evidence, findings of innocence, ineffective defense, and legal error.
The vast majority of these wrongfully-convicted individuals served time in state or federal prison before their convictions were thrown out, “collectively losing 1,313 years of their freedom,” the group reports.
40% of individuals in the dataset were initially sentenced to 20 years or more in prison, including many who received life, life without parole, or death sentences before their convictions were overturned;
They also look into the Rampart incident. They astonishingly find, “Individuals framed in the Los Angeles Rampart police scandal of the late 1990s account for 25% of the wrongful convictions in the dataset (53 people thus far; news reports estimate the total number of exonerated individuals at greater than 100), but only 10% of the 1,313 wasted years in prison were served by those individuals.”
The Rampart cases are so influential, perhaps because they are cases of known misconduct, that they run a separate analysis excluding those cases.
They write, “Excluding the Rampart cases, all of which were due to official misconduct, major factors contributing to these wrongful convictions include: perjury or false accusation (42% of the cases); official misconduct by police or prosecutors (39% of cases); mistaken eyewitness ID (26% of cases); inadequate or ineffective defense counsel (19% of cases); and DNA evidence (fewer than 6% of the cases).”
“This data shows that both inadvertent mistakes and deliberate misconduct are more common in our criminal justice system than most people think,” said John Hollway, the founder of Hollway Advisory Services. “We are seeing prosecutors and defense attorneys work hand in hand to reduce these errors. A systemic review of the mistakes will allow us to measure the frequency and costs of justice system flaws, especially in this era of prison overcrowding and cost overruns. We want to prioritize reforms to reduce wrongful convictions and their significant cost to taxpayers.”
As researchers actively review court records and reach out to attorneys across the state, they expect the number of cases in the study to increase substantially.
“We owe it to everyone involved, including the victims, to identify problems and work towards a more fair and accountable justice system,” said Andrea Russi, a former federal prosecutor and managing director of Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Well since our criminal justice system is so deeply flawed we should stop trying people at all.
Prop 34 is a ruse. It has nothing to do with justice. It’s about getting rid of the death penalty. If it was about justice prop 34 would be about reforming and tightening the rules regarding the death penalty, which I personally think would be a good idea. The ACLU and friends saying the death penalty is to expensive is like the EPA saying gasoline is too expensive.
[quote]The California Wrongful Convictions Project is collecting data on state and federal criminal convictions in California that are dismissed or overturned and result in acquittal, as well as cases where official misconduct resulted in civil damages. The Project has defined wrongful convictions to include those where all counts are dismissed by the court or by the prosecutor after conviction, as well as those where the conviction was reversed and the individual was completely acquitted on retrial.[/quote]
I thought these wrongful convictions were only from official misconduct. When you exclude the Rampart cases less than 40% were official misconduct. Rampart was horrible and dealt with accordingly. When you have 200 wrongful convictions in 23 years in a justice system this big I’d say that’s good. What other system is more accurate?
[url]http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/CAWrongfulConvictionsPrjFactSheetFINAL.pdf[/url]
“Well since our criminal justice system is so deeply flawed we should stop trying people at all. “
As opposed to trying to address what’s wrong with the system and fix it?
“Prop 34 is a ruse. It has nothing to do with justice. It’s about getting rid of the death penalty.”
Any why do people want to get rid of the death penalty? There are a variety of reasons but for me one of the chief reasons is that at least if you are only incarcerating people you can release them if you discover otherwise.
“When you have 200 wrongful convictions in 23 years in a justice system this big I’d say that’s good.”
The problem with that statement is that it leaves out an important qualifier: “known” wrongful convictions. My fear is that most cases that are wrongful convictions we do not know because in order to become part of the statistic there must be sufficient evidence to make the determination to overturn. That means that a Cameron Todd Willingham despite all of the problematic evidence that has emerged is still not listed as a wrongful conviction.
So I would suspect that the real number is ten if not 100 times larger than the 200 that are known.
[quote]So I would suspect that the real number is ten if not 100 times larger than the 200 that are known.[/quote]
Interesting. Do you accept the unproven negative as it relates to illegal voting or is that not a problem?
You’re arguing as though all unproven statements are created the same. The Cameron Todd Willingham example is a good one because there is a case that I think most people would accept as a wrongful conviction and yet it would not be currently statistically counted. I don’t see the parallel compelling evidence in your other seemingly unrelated and random example.
You are talking about unproven negatives. There has to be other undiscovered cases of innocent people being incarcerated out there. I would go so far as to say that one person was probably telling the truth with the “not my pants” defense. To say there isn’t would be silly.
There have been proven cases of voter fraud you you have recently dismissed voter fraud. I was just pointing out the obvious double standard.
Back to the topic.
Someone in my family lived this nightmare. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. Peace.
“It has nothing to do with justice. It’s about getting rid of the death penalty”
Which is one step in the right direction if, like me, one believes that the death penalty is about retribution and has nothing to do with justice.
The big problem with Death cases is Prosecutors that are either pushed, over zealous or work for a DA that is unethical and is only concerned about his press releases and his conviction rate.
I know from personal experience that in Yolo winning is a must. It is about stats and rates and grants. When Reisig took office he changed the evaluation precess for Deputy DA’s to penalize attorneys that did not win and get convictions.
The justification and attitude is if someone is wrongly convicted it is either the Jury’s fault or that is what the appeal process is for or that is what review Judges are paid for, all very poor reasons for ignoring the constitution and blaming others for unethical prosecution practices.
Even if a Dep. DA wants to do the right thing and wants to look for the truth, they are penalized or blamed for not getting a conviction. It is really despicable but knowing something and proving it is not always the same. I am sure some brilliant person will be on here saying prove it? If proof was so clear then how are innocent people getting convicted with proof?
Our justice system is not about truth and the collateral damage is our fellow citizens getting trampled by a system of lawyers claiming victory in the name of justice.
I too have been a witness to a wrongful conviction in Yolo County. The cost both financially and emotionally is devastating. Ajay Dev has spent over 1/2 million dollars defending a case that should have never gone to trial in the first place. And now he will spend years going through the appellate process, not seeing his children and family. Why?
The DDA is smart enough to know that the accuser in Ajay’s case was lying. Her story was full of holes and kept changing constantly. Rather than investigate the story and talk to witnesses that knew the truth, he decided that winning was more important than discovering the truth. To him this case was a game to win and not one of “right and wrong.”
He played this case like a chess game. He spent an inordinate amount of time trying to keep out evidence that would show the truth. He used some trumped up porn charges (which were shown to be false), and then he pressed to have the accuser be the official translator over that of an independent translator on a phone call(because the accuser would not be biased????). She claimed there was a confession on the tape when the independent translator claimed there was not. Because the DDA had no real evidence to support the accuser’s ever-changing story, he just spun his own story.
Unfortunately, the jury must have believed that the DDA didn’t have his own agenda and would only seek the truth of the matter. This is one reason why false convictions happen. DA’s need to look for the truth of the matter and only prosecute when there is a real case, not make a case so they can add to their conviction stats.
I agree w/ Roger R. Very well written. But it seems so overwhelming to write about fixing this problem. Several of my close friends are lawyers, retired lawyers, or went to law school & chose a different profession. Competition starts in our school system and continues into law school & beyond. If someone is given an A, someone else must be given a B. If someone wants to be promoted in the DA’s office, they might be overzealous in their convictions? Does the charge stacking thing that David wrote about mean that the DA gets career points for every charge? Shame on them. I think the DA is putting politics ahead of humanity. I believe that Solano County is every bit as guilty of this as Yolo County.
Lydia, it is clear you have a bit to learn about the justice system. This is not the best place to do so. I think you should spend some time at the court house observing.
I think Lydia has already had that lesson if I’m not mistaken. You should not be so presumptuous.
Mr. Obvious, if you work for the D.A. & are trying to bait me into providing enough details so you can figure out who I am, so you can send your goons to my home, again, to harrass my family further, how stupid do you think I am? I have never committed a crime in my life, so leave me alone. I have spent more hours in a courtroom than any innocent person in America should have to spend. Leave me, and my family, alone. Paranoid? Yeah, I am paranoid. And our criminal “justice” system in CA is responsible. Go pick on someone else, with your verbal bullying.