From [HERE] Black people are about 7½ times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder in the U.S. than are whites, and about 80% more likely to be innocent than others convicted of murder, according to a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations. The already disproportionate risk of wrongful conviction, the Registry found, was even worse if the murder victim in a case was white.

The report, Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States 2022, reviewed the cases of 3,200 innocent defendants exonerated in the United States since 1989. Black people, the researchers found, were 7 times more likely to be wrongfully convicted, were more likely to be the targets of police misconduct, and more likely to be imprisoned longer before being exonerated.

Black people were overrepresented in every category of the 1,167 wrongful murder convictions in the Registry’s database. African Americans constituted 56% (74/134) of all death sentenced exonerees; 55% (294/535) of wrongful murder convictions resulting in life imprisonment; and 54% (270/497) of wrongful murder convictions in which exonerees were sentenced to imprisonment for terms of years. “Innocent Black people are about seven-and-a-half times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people,” the Registry reported. That figure, the report noted, “applies equally to those who are sentenced to death and those who are not.”

“The report really shows the depth of the belief that race is a proxy for criminality in the criminal legal system,” Innocence Project Executive Director Christina Swarns said.