Number 200 of wrongly convicted - freed by DNA evidence
Jerry Miller is the 200th person in the nation
exonerated through DNA evidence.
With new DNA tests proving that Jerry Miller did not commit a brutal rape in Chicago for which he was convicted in 1982, the Innocence Project said today that Miller is the 200th person in the nation exonerated through DNA evidence.
In 1981, Miller was arrested and charged with kidnapping, raping and robbing a woman in downtown Chicago. He was convicted in 1982 and served 24 years in prison. Eleven months ago, he was released on parole as a registered sex offender, requiring him to wear an electronic monitoring device at all times and prohibiting him from answering his door on Halloween or leaving his job for lunch. DNA testing on semen from the rape proves that Miller did not commit the crime – and instead implicates another man as the actual perpetrator.
A few of the stats on those wrongly convicted:
Eyewitness misidentification plays a role in 77% of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA (of those, nearly half are cross-racial misidentifications).
Racism continues to be a significant cause of wrongful convictions. While 29% of people in prison for rape are black, 64% of the people who were wrongfully convicted of rape (and then exonerated through DNA) are black. Moreover, most sexual assaults nationwide are among perpetrators and victims of the same race (the federal government says just 12% of sexual assaults are cross racial), but two-thirds of all black men exonerated through DNA evidence were wrongfully convicted of raping white people.
None of this is a surprise to anyone who cares about removing the stain of racism from our national culture. The cruelest part of the equation is the number of jurisdictions where the politicians in charge of “justice” still drag their feet over reforming a system that so often fails.
Posted: Tue - April 24, 2007 at 10:38 AM