The National Registry of Exonerations

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Have you heard of the National Registry of Exonerations? Founded in 2012 by the University of Michigan Law School in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. The registry keeps track of every overturned conviction and exonerated person in the United States since 1989. With the ability to use DNA evidence, the list is ever growing.

It’s a fascination website full of information for anyone interested in social justice and change. There is a list of recent exonerations with some details, recent news in the progress of exonerations, interesting graphs with statistics, and more. What a worthy project this is to gather all this information in one place. The site states that to date they have over 1550 exonerations listed. Wow

Many, many people are incarcerated for crimes they did commit, including myself. Sometimes the sentence seems harsh and sometimes it seems not long enough. But they did the crime, and they are being punished as a judge or a jury of their peers deemed fit. That is our system and overall its fair and better than a lot of other places. But when a truly innocent person spends years in prison for something they did not do – I cannot even imagine! All too often the person is not of means to properly defend themselves or to understand the system fully. What is the answer to this? I don’t think there is one, really.
But the fact that today we can read of those exonerated and have hope for those that might still be in this predicament is very hopeful. Peace y’all.