While there is much prior research on canonical and other factors that influence wrongful convictions, much less is known about their impact on the time between conviction and exoneration. The current study analyzes several years of data (January 1989 to June 2025) from the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) to investigate the factors that may impact the amount of time between conviction and exoneration. Individual canonical factors as well as the total number of canonical factors are analyzed. The analysis reveals that demographic factors such as race and gender, and certain canonical factors are significantly related to the time between conviction and exoneration. Total number of factors was also significant, but the explanatory power of the model was less than that of the model that included the individual canonical factors. Findings are then discussed in terms of implications and future research.
McGrath et al. (Wed,) studied this question.