David Robinson, an innocent man, was released from prison after serving nearly 18 years. This begs the question; just how many innocent people are in prison? Last year 139 innocent people were released, and in 2016 there were 171 released.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, these cases involved police misconduct or perjury, misconduct by prosecutors and government officials, false accusations, mistaken eyewitness identification… In some cases, police officers actually framed people. This happened to 96 defendants (or should I say victims) in Chicago and Baltimore where police framed them for drug-related crimes.
According to Professor Barbara O’Brien, editor of the National Registry of Exonerations, in four of the 139 cases, the victims were falsely accused of murder and sentenced to death. I fail to see how anyone could support the death penalty in a society where the judicial system is so flawed. If there is even one case of an innocent person being wrongfully imprisoned, then there should never be a death penalty.
David Robinson is a black man who was wrongfully accused of murder. Even though there was no physical evidence, the real killer (Romanze Mosby) confessed in 2009, and the witnesses admitted they had lied, Robinson remained in prison.
According to Missouri Supreme Court Judge Darrell Missey’s report, this case also involved misconduct on the part of police and a former assistant attorney general who "knowingly presented false testimony" and "failed to take any steps to correct that false testimony."
The Department of Corrections planned to keep Robinson until the end of May even though charges against him had been dropped. Had his attorneys not threatened to file an emergency motion to have him released on May 14, Robinson would likely still be in prison. While African Americans are only 13 percent of the U.S. population they are not only seven times more likely to be convicted of murder than white people, they are also 50 percent more likely to be innocent.
In the last thirty years, 1,962 people have been exonerated, and it is estimated that 4.1% of are sentenced to death are proven innocent. How many slip through the cracks? How many does the judicial system fail? Again, I believe that if we fail even one time it is one time too many.
