What percentage of people in jail are innocent of their convicted crimes?

[Lunar]

of the *specific* crimes they are convicted of, not being associated with them.

Remember, that innocence can result of many factors:
1) Being framed
2) Refusing to take the fall for a friend
3) An unethical prosecutor
4) A public defender interested in his own "score" that encourages you to you concede to a plea bargain out of fear of being convicted for a longer sentence.
5) Being accused of a crime people hate.  Think of the Duke LaCrosse team but where the accuser isn't a bipolar prostitute with no evidence and constant conflicting testimony. 
6) Other factors?

Note that #4 isn't uncommon.  I remember Michael Moore made some initial fame before his was famous, in my rural county in California where he exposed a disgusting system of forcing plea bargains upon innocent defendants.  Not that he's a good person himself or anything.

[dead0man]

I'd guess less than 10% to be safe, but it is probably well under 5%.  If it's higher than 10% then we've got a huge problem.

[Lunar]

One out of twenty people being denied their rights and shoved in a cell with essentially dog food seems pretty bad, so I hope it's less than 5%

Personally, I'm interested in a possible followup question, asking what is to be done even if it's as high as 1%.

[dead0man]

I think 1% has to be acceptable.  It sucks for that one percent and we should do everything within reason to bring that number down even lower, but you can't remove all errors in a system as full and complex as this.  I'm of the mindset that I'd rather let a 100 guilty men go free than to have one innocent in jail, but I think it's unavoidable.  You will always have innocents in jail.  Kids will still die of cancer.  Old ladies will still get pushed down stairs.

[Lunar]

I guess you're right.

1% is unacceptable if there is anything bureaucratically systemic about it.  But if it is just human mistakes then, meh, ok.  I suppose that's the product of having a truly talented government prosecutor, human bias, people exploiting the system, among other things.


I guess when I posted that I was thinking of the death penalty.  I always get disgusted whenever someone is let off of Death Row because DNA evidence proves them innocent all along.  It makes you wonder what was going on before DNA evidence (a systemic flaw).  But yeah I'm pretty sure I agree.

[dead0man]

I guess when I posted that I was thinking of the death penalty.  I always get disgusted whenever someone is let off of Death Row because DNA evidence proves them innocent all along.  It makes you wonder what was going on before DNA evidence (a systemic flaw). 

It turns my stomach to think about.  It's one thing to die tragically on the side of the road or at the hands of a bad guy or disease, but to die tragically at the hands of the state when you are innocent of the accusations is abominable.  History is full of such cases and everyone of them is horrible.  Thank God for DNA.

[Lunar]

I've actually debated starting a thread, which I still may do, about what adequate compensation would be for spending 20-30 years on death row, only to be found innocent all along.  It's such a hard punishment to monetize because you could have progressed so much in some career during that time.

Everyone knows what happened before the 1980s or so when they discovered DNA evidence.  God knows how people will look back on these decades and their evidence-collecting abilities, but I doubt it'll be favorable

[opebo]

Even in the narrow definition you use it is probably well over 10%.  We're talking poor people here, people.  There's really very little they can do to defend themselves if they're accused.

The rough part is the rapings they will receive in the joint.. turns a 3-5 year incarceration into a death sentence.

[dead0man]

You forget the last time we did the prison rape thing?  It doesn't happen anywhere near as often as we generally think it does.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I guess when I posted that I was thinking of the death penalty.  I always get disgusted whenever someone is let off of Death Row because DNA evidence proves them innocent all along.  It makes you wonder what was going on before DNA evidence (a systemic flaw). 

It turns my stomach to think about.  It's one thing to die tragically on the side of the road or at the hands of a bad guy or disease, but to die tragically at the hands of the state when you are innocent of the accusations is abominable.  History is full of such cases and everyone of them is horrible.  Thank God for DNA.

That's one of the reasons why I'm against the death penalty and am so glad my state doesn't kill people.

[Lunar]

I suppose it's another, but fascinating, question as to what the percentage of innocent people on death row is.

I wonder what future technologies like DNA will show us how wrong we were.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

I'd guess somewhere between 5-10%.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

A friend of mine said that someone we know was close to being convicted of murdering his girlfriend when the real killer suddenly confessed.

[tik 🪀✨]

I'm more interested in people incarcerated for crimes that shouldn't even be crimes to begin with.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I'm more interested in people incarcerated for crimes that shouldn't even be crimes to begin with.

    Yep, there's far too many drug offenders behind bars.

[ilikeverin]

In approximately 75% of the cases where people are taken off death row, the innocent people put there got into that situation because of false witness testimony.

[Lunar]

In approximately 75% of the cases where people are taken off death row, the innocent people put there got into that situation because of false witness testimony.

Deliberately false?  Regardless, way too many lay people overvalue personal recounting - it's amazing how differently two people under duress can describe an identical situation.  And do you just mean that false testimony was involved somewhere in the trial?

[Sbane]

I'm more interested in people incarcerated for crimes that shouldn't even be crimes to begin with.

[dead0man]

In approximately 75% of the cases where people are taken off death row, the innocent people put there got into that situation because of false witness testimony.

You GOT to have a cite for that.

[SPC]

I'm more interested in people incarcerated for crimes that shouldn't even be crimes to begin with.

    Yep, there's far too many drug offenders behind bars.

Yes, I believe >60% of the entire prison population alone.

[ilikeverin]

In approximately 75% of the cases where people are taken off death row, the innocent people put there got into that situation because of false witness testimony.

Deliberately false?  Regardless, way too many lay people overvalue personal recounting - it's amazing how differently two people under duress can describe an identical situation.  And do you just mean that false testimony was involved somewhere in the trial?

Sorry; not deliberately false.  Most of the time the witnesses believe they're being entirely truthful in their testimony, and are convincing enough in the emphaticness of their statements that people believe them.  "Witness misidentification" is a much better descriptor

In approximately 75% of the cases where people are taken off death row, the innocent people put there got into that situation because of false witness testimony.

You GOT to have a cite for that.

Sure and here's more info.

[Lunar]

Moral of the story? You're screwed if you're mixed-race.

[Nym90]

Given the burden of proof required for conviction, maybe 1%.

It's a lawyer's duty to recommend a plea bargain if there is a high probability of the defendant being convicted, even if they are innocent; a lawyer's job is to get the best possible outcome for his or her client, not to stand on moral principle (which is, of course, much of the reason why the profession is held in such high disdain).

Yeah, eyewitness testimony is pretty unreliable. In both directions.

But yeah, lots of people are behind bars that shouldn't be, even if they are technically guilty. Drug crimes and all that.

[Four49]

I'd say the drug thing alone puts it higher than 10%.  How many people get convicted as dealers based on the amount they have in possession, even though they never intended to sell any of it? 

And I'm not sure about other states, but here in IL, if you get accused of something along the lines of assault and/or battery, and you don't have any witnesses to back you up or a rock solid alibi, you're pretty much screwed.  I've known half a dozen people that were convicted because they couldn't prove that they didn't do it.  Three of them ended up doing time, the other three ended up plea bargaining.

[Coburn In 2012]

Hardly any I would guess.