Chicago Researchers Set Up National Registry Of Exonerations
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Researchers in Chicago have been compiling the numbers and now are out with the first national registry of exonerations.
As WBBM Newsradio's Regine Schlesinger reports, the registry – created by the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University along with the University of Michigan Law School – finds that over the past two decades, more than 2,000 convicts have subsequently been found innocent of the crimes for which they were sent to prison.
Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, says 103 of those convicts were in Illinois.
"Of those, more than half resulted from false confessions. They were confessions that were coerced from people who subsequently were shown to have been innocent," Warden said.
The creators of the registry called the exonerations they found just the tip of the iceberg. They believe there are more false convictions and exonerations that have not been documented.
LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio's Regine Schlesinger reports
