The Racial Justice Act (2020)

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:

1. In criminal cases where the victim and perpetrator are of different races, there is a significantly higher risk of misidentification. This is especially common in sexual assault cases, where African American exonerees were often misidentified by white victims.
2. Race-of-victim disparities: Wrongful convictions involving African American defendants and white victims are disproportionately higher due to biases and inaccurate investigations.
3. Racial profiling and discrimination in law enforcement: African Americans are targeted, stopped, and searched much more often, which leads to an overrepresentation of innocent African American defendants in drug crimes, further reinforcing stereotypes,  racial profiling and discrimination.
4. Police and prosecutorial misconduct: African American defendants face police and prosecutorial misconduct that is especially prevalent among murder exonerations with Black defendants, especially in death penalty cases.
5. Longer imprisonment for African American exonerees: African American exonerees often faced longer sentences and had a harder time receiving bail and getting exonerated. Many innocent Black defendants  are forced to deal with bias and discrimination while fighting for their innocence during investigations to trials and sentencing. 

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://thecrimereport.org/2022/09/27/black-people-seven-times-more-likely-to-suffer-wrongful-convictions-study/

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