TheAgitator.com
The 250th DNA Exoneration
Thursday, February 4th, 2010Freddie Peacock, 60, of Rochester, New York has become the 250th person exonerated by DNA testing. Peacock was convicted of rape in 1976 and paroled in 1982. He tried to remain on parole so he’d still have access to the courts to clear his name.
The Innocence Project breaks down the 250 exonerations over the last 20 years:
• There have been DNA exonerations in 33 states and the District of Columbia.
• The top three states for DNA exonerations are New York (with 25), Texas (with 40) and Illinois (with 29).
• 76% of the wrongful convictions involved eyewitness misidentification.
• 50% involved unvalidated or improper forensic science.
• 27% relied on a false confession, admission or guilty plea.
• 70% of the 250 people exonerated are people of color (60% are black; nearly 9% are Latino; 29% are white).
Dallas County, Texas alone has had 19 DNA exonerations, in part because it’s one of the only jurisdictions in the country with a district attorney who is actually seeking out false convictions. That’s a pretty good indication that the 250 figure would be higher if there were more DAs like him.
One other point: The subset of cases for which DNA testing is dispositive of guilt is pretty small. So it also seems safe to say that whatever flaws in the criminal justice system that allowed these wrongful convictions to happen are just as prevalent in the much larger set of cases where DNA isn’t a factor.
They were probably guilty of something.
34 years to set a man free.
My god, what a waste of a life.
See, the system works. There is no need to call for complete overhaul of the criminal justice system. It only causes the public to lose faith in those heroes, the police and prosecutors. Its just like you see on Law & Order.
#2: Aresen,
Apparently Defendant Peacock was paroled in 1982. It doesn’t appear that he served 34 years in prison; ONLY six.
Amazing.
Remember that for every wrongful conviction a guilty person is most likely still free doing more of the same. Thanks a lot cops, DAs, and shitty labs.
“#2: Aresen,
Apparently Defendant Peacock was paroled in 1982. It doesn’t appear that he served 34 years in prison; ONLY six.”
It’s the “ONLY” that I’m stuck on here.
And do you really think that it was the end of it once out of prison?
Whim @ 4:11 PM
Yes, I noticed he was paroled (NOT pardoned) in 1982
I was referring to all the damage that had been done to him by the full time that he was considered a “criminal”, ie 34 years.
By any measure, six years incarceration in prison, even if wrongfully convicted, is certainly better than THIRTY-FOUR years in prison.
Wouldn’t you agree?
Oh, definitely.
But if you are innocent, then you are not truly free until the stigma of presumed guilt is removed, IMHO.
In high school, we had the 1st man exonerated speak to us. It was one of the most emotional speeches I’ve ever heard. The worst part? People still thought he was guilty.
Re: #10 Andrew
Sigh. Don’t you get it? If he wasn’t guilty, he wouldn’t have gone to prison.
Honestly, though, sometimes I think we just tell ourselves that because we can’t handle the truth.
Mea Culpa – for a few years, I considered myself a conservative although I was never a death penalty supporter. I really can’t understand how any human being and support the death penalty with all the proof of how unbelievably bad it’s implemented. If murdering an innocent person is soo bad that it warrants death, how can people advocating it not see the contradiction here?
I want to say I’m glad to see this many people exhonerated, but it means that at least this many people were wrongly convicted in the first place – what a freaking mess. There’s no use fixing it, throw it out and start over
Boyd: Guilty people going free is ok. Because guilty going free is a lot better than innocent people being convicted. No? I’m a lot more ok with any criminal, perv, murderer you name it going free than an innocent man/woman going to jail for the same – and yes, I’d say that even if my loved ones were the ones in question. Sticking someone innocent in jail does nothing for anyone – nothing good anyway
Andrew #10, I was going to say “Well it was high school, its understandable that some students would make the uninformed knee-jerk reaction that the man was guilty. Many probably couldn’t understand the evidence that exonerated him. Essentially they have to take someones word for it, so they defer to the greater authority, the state that convicted him.”
Then I realized that this sophomoric attitude is the one held by the adults that make up the base of the Law & Order crowd. They do not care about guilt or innocence, its all some tribal throwback about scapegoating a person to excise them from the community. They take pride not in tearing down the ‘other’ and if the powers that be make the arbitrary decision that you are the ‘other’ thats a good enough reason to bask in your destruction.
The fact that the objects of their sacrifice actually didn’t do anything wrong never disturbs them, not because they are convinced of guilt, but because their concerns over guilt are a facade in the first place. Their attitude only makes sense when you realize that they are not talking about justice, its actually more like a concept of sin or purity. They have replaced the medieval attitude towards witches and lepers with the modern notion of criminal justice, which makes it that much harder for people outside that mentality to figure out what they are actually talking about.
Thanks for the info. Congratulations to those that fought on Mr. Peacock’s behalf. We can only hope & pray that this leads to more ‘closed cases’ being considered from now on.
We strongly advocate for the Innocence Project’s Key Findings to finally be addressed (closed & open alike). The courts and the Board of Pardons and Paroles long enough have ignored eyewitness identification mishaps and plea bargain abuses that result in false arrests and wrongful convictions.
250 exonerations in 20 years are simply not enough. This amount is due to only a handful of students targeting certain states in hopes that DNA holds the answers to specific wrongful convictions. Hopefully more law schools, organizations, and D. A’s. Offices will implement innocence projects of their own that take ‘ALL’ cases, including the closed cases having absolutely nothing to do with DNA & Death Row.