Rate of False Convictions
Comment: New Study Estimates Rate of False Convictions at 11.6% - 5 December 2017
A report by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. estimates that the defendants were
innocent in 11.6% percent of rape and rape-murder convictions in Virginia from in the 1970s and
1980s. The origins of this study go back several decades.
Rate of false conviction of criminal defendants who aresentenced to death - 25 March 2014
The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. We use survival analysis to model this effect, and estimate
that if all death-sentenced defendants remained under sentence
of death indefinitely at least 4.1% would be exonerated.