Exonerations by Year of Conviction and Type of Crime

National Registry of Exonerations

Roll cursor over the graph to see totals for each year. National Registry of Exonerations: public use permitted.

Exonerations Graph By:

About the Registry

The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society at University of California Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law. It was founded in 2012 in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. The Registry provides detailed information about every known exoneration in the United States since 1989—cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all the charges based on new evidence of innocence. The Registry also maintains a more limited database of known exonerations prior to 1989.

Contact Us

We welcome new information from any source about exonerations already on our list and about cases not in the Registry that might be exonerations.

A Project of the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science & Society, University of Michigan Law School & Michigan State University College of Law

3,121 exonerations since 1989More than 27,080 Years Lost

​Exonerations by Year of Conviction and Type of Crime

National Registry of Exonerations

Exonerations Graph By:

About the Registry

Contact Us

A Project of the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science & Society,
University of Michigan Law School & Michigan State University College of Law

3,121 exonerations since 1989
More than 27,080 Years Lost

Exonerations by Year of Conviction and Type of Crime