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Study: Half of People Falsely Convicted Are Black

HeadlineMay 22, 2012

New research shows half of people falsely convicted of serious crimes in the United States in recent decades are African American. An archive assembled by law school researchers at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University reveals more than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the past 23 years. Of the nearly 900 for whom detailed information is available, half are African American and more than 100 were facing death sentences. Excluded from the registry are more than 1,100 additional defendants whose convictions were discarded after it was revealed police officers fabricated crimes.

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