Exonerations: Causes, Consequences, and Reforms

Exonerations following the wrongful conviction of the innocent are now commonplace and widely recognized. And yet wrongful convictions continue to plague the American criminal justice system. In this article, we discuss and critique the definition and concept of an exoneration and explore the growing influence of the National Registry of Exonerations, an online database and repository of wrongful convictions that has inspired substantial scholarship since its founding in 2012. Analyzing this scholarship and the National Registry of Exonerations’ data and reports it relied on, we review and analyze the primary legal errors that contribute to wrongful convictions and the reforms designed to minimize these errors and explore the systemic problems affecting the criminal justice system that allow these errors to take root and persist.