A significant majority of wrongfully convicted individuals in the United States are African Americans. As of 2016, the National Registry of Exonerations revealed that almost half of the 1,900 defendants who were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit and were much later proven innocent were African Americans (47%) and this does not even account for the predominantly African American defendants who were cleared in "group exonerations." This statistic is especially disturbing given that African Americans account only for 13% of the population. In fact, in murder cases, innocent African Americans are seven times more likely to be convicted than innocent Caucasians. The race-based discrimination persists in sexual assault cases and drug-related crimes as well, with an innocent African American being 12 times more likely to be found guilty and wrongfully convicted than a Caucasian.
Some major factors of wrongful convictions based on race in the US:
In our current justice system, African Americans thus face harsher punishments, searches, arrests, and convictions. The biased practices causing such grave imbalances in our criminal justice system must be addressed. One tool that is making a difference is the Racial Justice Act of 1988, which prohibits the imposition or the carrying out of the death penalty in a racially disproportionate pattern. Adapted in some states (including Kentucky and California), the law allows death row inmates to challenge their sentences based on evidence of racial bias during jury selection, prosecution decisions, or sentencing based on race. The RJA is thus a huge step towards helping to fight racial bias within the criminal justice system and combat wrongful convictions based on race.
Sources:
https://innocenceproject.org/race-and-wrongful-conviction/
https://aclucalaction.org/bill/ab-256/
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/racial-justice-act-simple-matter-justice
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/NRE%20Annual%20Report%202022.pdf
People's Commission for Integrity in Criminal Justice
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