But experts and advocates aren't surprised: They say U.S. prisons are filled with potentially thousands of innocent people.
"Innocent New Yorkers will continue to sit in our jails and prisons, or remain saddled with an unlawful criminal record in our communities, unable to clear their names," warned one critic.
“These cases represent hundreds of New Yorkers who have been living with the serious costs that come with a conviction, including barriers to employment, housing and education."
Since 1973, 187 people have been exonerated from death row, with one of the main reasons being inadequate counsel. This will only worsen that situation.
This is the story of a broken justice system. It appears that an innocent man was framed by sheriff’s deputies and is on death row in part because of dishonest cops, sensational media coverage and flawed political leaders.
Researchers have been hard at work studying how it is that innocent people sometimes go to prison for crimes they did not commit. A recent report documented that in 2015 there were a record number of exonerations in the United States, as many as one in four involving false confessions. Here are three pathways to a false confession.
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