Death Row Exoneration Research Paper

crimes and later exonerated, the researchers write, they constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in ‘group exonerations.
For homicides, researchers found not just that black people were more likely than white people to be wrongfully convicted, but that innocent black people spent more time in prison before they were exonerated:
• “Judging from exonerations, innocent black people are about seven times more likely to be convicted of homicides than innocent white people.”
• “African Americans imprisoned for murder

are more likely to be innocent if they were convicted of killing white victims. Only about 15% of murders by African Americans have white victims, but 31% of innocent African-American murder exonerees were convicted of killing white people.”
• “The convictions that led to murder exonerations with black defendants were 22% more likely to include misconduct by police officers than those with white defendants.”
• “Exonerations of innocent murder defendants take longer if the defendant is black, 14.2 years on average, then if he is white, 11.2 years.

For death row exonerations in the Registry the average delays and the difference by race are larger, 16 years for black defendants and 12 years for whites.
Overall, the study paints a very clear picture: Black people are disadvantaged within the criminal justice system, leading to massive disparities even among those who are entirely innocent. The causes we have identified run from inevitable consequences of patterns in crime and punishment to deliberate acts of racism, with many stops in between. the researchers found that some of the disparity is driven in large part by higher homicide rates in black communities.
CASE STUDY

8
HOW DOES RACE PLAY INTO SENTENCING BETWEEN DIFFERENT RACE PERPERATOR AND VICTIMS?
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks accounted for 39.4% of the prison and jail population in 2009, while non-Hispanic whites were 34.2%, and Hispanics (of any race) 20.6%. The incarceration rate of black males was over six times higher than that of white males, with a rate of 4,749 per 100,000 US residents. Researchers found that law enforcement misconduct and racism also played major roles, such as police deliberately targeting black people for raids, arrests, and false confessions, witnesses identifying the wrong suspect (“a notoriously error-prone process when white Americans are asked to identify black strangers”) and preexisting racial biases among jurors and judges influencing convictions and sentences.

FIG 2: PERCENT OF ADULT MALES INCARCERATED BY RACE AND ETHNICITY IN 2009

CASE STUDY 9
IS GENDER AN ISSUE IN MURDER TRIALS AND HOW? DOES RACE PLAY INTO IT? AND HOW?
The gender of the victim in a murder trials in the United States always or slightly favors the females, there is a perception that when a male and a female are on loggerheads on a murder case the male is mostly perceived as guilty. Also race places a major factor in murder Cases in the U.S, a black male is likely to be convicted even when innocent, when it involves a white female, also from Fig 2 on this paper, you would find out that a black male is two times more convicted or tried for homicides or murder than any other race in the United States. Among all social groups in the United States, black men and black women experience some of the starkest disparities, inequities, and injustices when it comes to murder cases involving any gender of whites. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports data on homicides that occurred in the United States between 1976 and 1987. Only cases that involved victims aged 15 years or older were included. Persons killed during law enforcement activity and cases in which the victim's gender was not recorded were excluded. A total of 215,273 homicides were studied, 77% of which involved male victims and 23% female victims. Although the overall risk of homicide for women was substantially lower than that of men (rate ratio [RR] = 0.27), their risk of being killed by a spouse or intimate acquaintance was higher (RR = 1.23). In contrast to men, the killing of a woman by a stranger was rare (RR = 0.18). More than twice as many women were shot and killed by their husband or intimate acquaintance than were murdered by strangers using guns, knives, or any other means. Although women comprise more than half the U.S. population, they committed only 14.7% of the homicides noted during the study interval. In contrast to men, who killed nonintimate acquaintances, strangers, or victims of undetermined relationship in 80% of cases, women killed their spouse, an intimate acquaintance, or a family member in 60% of cases.

CASE STUDY 10
IS THERE A LINK BETWEEN HOMICIDES AND OTHER CRIMES?
There is a link between homicides and other crimes in this paper it will be explained with three typologies.
The first of the three typologies are homicides committed in relation to other criminal activities that are aimed, directly or indirectly, at obtaining illicit profits. Within such a broad category, two distinct types of homicide can be identified: those committed by organized criminal groups; and those committed while perpetrating other, more conventional criminal acts such as robbery. Although the main goal of organized criminal groups is to generate illicit profit, they may commit homicide for a variety of reasons, from the elimination of rivals and State representatives, to shows of strength and territorial control.
The Second is “interpersonal Homicide”, Central to this definition of the second homicide typology is the fact that homicide is not instrumental to the accomplishment of a secondary goal but is rather a means of resolving a conflict and/or punishing the victim through violence when relationships come under strain (including from friction due to social and cultural norms).

The two main categories in this typology are homicide related to intimate partner or family relationships, in which victim and perpetrator are relatives, share the same household and/or an intimate relationship; and other interpersonal homicide, in which the victim and perpetrator may or may not know each other. The relationship in intimate partner/ family-related homicide is distinguished from the relationship in the other interpersonal homicide category by the level of emotional attachment and other links, often of an economic or legal nature, between victim and perpetrator. Homicides within this typology can be the result of a premeditated design or of a random act of violence, but the nature of the relationship between perpetrator and victim is a fundamental feature of this crime. Straddling the divide between the private and public spheres, much of this type of violence is attributed to the very nature of coexisting with and among

others.
The third typology encompasses homicides that originate in the public sphere and are typically committed as an instrument for advancing social or political agendas. Power relationships, including among social, ethnic and political groups, are involved and homicide is committed to exert influence over those relationships, whether directly or indirectly. People are killed for what they represent and/or for the message that such killings can convey to the public or to specific sub-sectors. In contrast to interpersonal homicide, the victims of this typology are often anonymous to its perpetrators, or at least the nature of the relationship between them is not a consideration in the decision to kill. Often the result of premeditation and organization, homicides of this type include those resulting from acts of terrorism and hate crime, amongst many others. War and conflict-related killings are also considered acts of socio-political violence but are not included in this category as they are outside the realm of intentional homicides.

CASE STUDY 11
WHAT IS FERGUSON EFFECT
The Ferguson effect is the idea that increased scrutiny of police following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri has led to an increased crime rate (or sometimes increased murder rate) in major U.S. cities. The mechanism usually suggested is that police have less vigorous enforcement in situations that might lead to backlash, though other mechanisms are suggested. The term was coined by Doyle Sam Dotson III, the chief of the St. Louis police, to account for an increased murder rate in some U.S. cities following the Ferguson unrest. The concept has been criticized by some academics and politicians, including former President Barack Obama, as being inaccurate or non-existent.
CASE STUDY 12
IS FERGUSON EFFECT RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL CRIMES
Pundits across the country have blamed the “Ferguson effect” for a rise in crime, but one local researcher says there’s not clear proof for the theory.
University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld Published a report examining whether various factors in the aftermath of alleged police misconduct and heavily publicized protests are driving crime up. He found contradictory evidence, depending on where one looks. Some cities haven’t seen a rise in any major crime category, while some have seen a mixed bag and others are seeing crime up across the board. The result is a “cherry picker’s delight” of data, Rosenfeld said. So, he looked at St. Louis, close to Ferguson and where homicides, other violent crimes and property crimes were all up in 2014, to see what the timing of the increases could tell him, Rosenfeld found that the bulk of 2014’s increase in homicides in St. Louis came from crimes before Michael Brown was shot by a Ferguson police officer on Aug. 9. “We can conclude with reasonable certainty that the events in Ferguson were not responsible for the steep rise in homicide in St. Louis,” Rosenfeld wrote. A rise in other violent crimes in St. Louis began in May 2014, but the rate of increase over the previous year seems to have accelerated somewhat after the Ferguson shooting and subsequent protests, Rosenfeld found. He called that “mixed support, at best” for a Ferguson effect hypothesis. Nonviolent property crimes, meanwhile, were down 15 percent from 2013 before the shooting of Brown. Then they began to grow over 2013 figures and, by December, exceeded the 2013 numbers by about 27 percent, Rosenfeld said. That “offers the strongest evidence in support of the hypothesis that the Ferguson events led to crime increases in St. Louis, at least with respect to timing,” Rosenfeld said. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson, who Rosenfeld credits with coining the term “Ferguson effect,” has cited various possible factors, from police moved to protests instead of normal duty to an “emboldening” of criminals. Others have theorized that officers feel demoralized and thus aren’t as proactive in fighting crime. Jeff Roorda, the business manager for the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association, said there is no question that the Ferguson effect is to blame for the city’s crime crisis.
“As you’ve got this gravitational pull of anti-police sentiment from demonstrators, politicians and media that is causing a high tide on crime and a low tide on enforcement.
” Roorda said, “the two together create a real problem.” Dotson said he still believes in some aspects of the Ferguson effect, but said no matter the cause the increase in crime is real. “I’m seei