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A new study suggests that about 10,000 people may be wrongfully convicted of serious crimes each year across the country. Since 1989, there have been tens of thousands of cases where prime suspects were identified and pursued—until DNA testing (prior to conviction) proved that they were wrongly accused. After the first DNA exoneration took place in 1989, exonerations have been won in 36 states.
According to the Innocence Project the average DNA exoneree served 13 years in prison before he or she was freed. Seventeen had been sentenced to death. 67 percent of the exonerated were convicted after 2000, the year that marked the onset of modern DNA testing. Each new exoneration adds more urgency to the question that has hovered over these cases since the first convict was cleared by DNA in 1989: How many more innocent people are waiting to be freed?


thumbnail photo by: aecom.com

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