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Chapter 3 Introducing the Exonerees To give context to our analyses, it is important first to introduce the lives and wrongful convictions of our participants. Because the true population of wrongful conviction cases is not known, we cannot generalize the characteristics of these cases to the characteristics of wrongful conviction cases overall. The cases in our study are distinctive in two main respects. First, our eighteen participants have all been convicted of capital crimes and sentenced to death. While to date the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) identifies 138 such cases, the majority of known wrongful conviction cases do not involve capital crimes. For example, of the 273 known DNA exonerations, only 17 were for capital offenses (www.innocenceproject.org). Of the 340 mostly rape and murder wrongful convictions identified by Samuel Gross et al. (2005) between 1989 and 2003, about one-quarter involved death sentences. Thus, the participants in our study represent a smaller subset of wrongful conviction cases. Second, a minority (17 percent) of our participants were exonerated using DNA evidence. Of the 340 exonerations noted by Gross et al. (2005), 42 percent resulted from the use of DNA, and no doubt an even larger percentage might account for exonerations today given the continued work of the Innocence Project and wider acceptance of this technology by police, prosecutors, and courts. Our participants, instead, often benefited from the discovery of new evidence, the recantation of witnesses who had perjured themselves at trial, and the revelation of police and/or prosecutorial misconduct that tainted their original convictions. Although these issues also are prevalent in DNA cases, the use of DNA often provides a degree of certainty that courts (and the public) seek for claims of innocence (Leo 2005). Aside from these two primary differences, the case characteristics of our participants are similar to those of other known exonerees. 29 Case Characteristics Table 3.1 displays a summary of biographical and case-related details of the participants in our study. Seventeen participants are men; one— Sabrina Butler—is a woman. Of the 138 death row exonerees identified by the DPIC, Butler is the only woman. We thought it essential, therefore , to include her in the research. Female exonerees are few and far between, even within the other two primary groups of known wrongful convictions: the Innocence Project includes only 3 women among their 273 DNA exonerees, and Gross et al. (2005) include only 13 women among their 340 exonerees. Nine (50 percent) of our participants are black, seven (39 percent) are white, and two (11 percent) are Latino. This racial breakdown is close to the racial composition of all death row exonerees. According to the DPIC, 51 percent of the 138 death row exonerees are black, 38 percent are white, and 9 percent are Latino. The racial configuration of our participants also is in line with other known groups of exonerees. Of the Innocence Project’s exonerees, 61 percent are black, 30 percent white, and 7 percent Latino (2 percent are of another ethnicity or their race/ethnicity is unknown). Gross et al. (2005) reveal a similar composition of 55 percent black, 32 percent white, and 13 percent Latino. The average length of time our participants were incarcerated was 9.5 years, though this masks variation in time served by exonerees, ranging from 2 to 26 years. The DPIC indicates that the average length of time between death sentence and exoneration for all death row exonerees is 9.8 years, and the Innocence Project notes a 13-year average length of time served for DNA exonerees. Though all of our participants were originally convicted of capital crimes and sentenced to death, some received retrials at which they were reconvicted but sentenced to life in prison and, as a result, moved from death row into the general population of prison. In these cases, the average length of time served in prison is not equivalent to the average time spent on death row, which is a lesser period of 5 years with a range of no time on death row to 17.5 years. At the time of our interview, the amount of time that had passed since participants’ exonerations ranged from 1.5 to 32 years. Their average age at the time of their original conviction was twentynine . The eighteen participants represented ten different states in which their wrongful convictions and exonerations occurred. S e t t i n g t h e S t a g e 30 [18.221.165...

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