Innocence is Not Enough: The Public Life of Death Row Exonerations

86 In this and subsequent tables we focus on the subset of articles which contain some explanation or argument about why someone was released from death row.

Table 3

Who Questions Innocence? 90

Speaker	Percentage of Times Innocence is Questioned
State	177 (68.3%)
Advocate for Victim	45 (17.5%)
Juror	7 (2.7%)
Citizen	26 (10%)
Newspaper	4 (1.5%)
Total of Speakers who Questioned Innocence	259

90 The total here is larger than the 235 articles in which innocence is questioned because those articles may contain more than one instance in which that occurs.

Table 4

Questioning Innocence in DNA Exonerations

Innocence Questioned
DNA Case	41 (17.5%)
Non-DNA Case	194 (82.5%)
Total Number of Articles in Which Innocence is Questioned	235

Table 5

Who Questions Innocence?

Speakers Questioning Innocence	DNA Cases	Non-DNA Cases
State	37 (90.4%)	129 (66.5%)
Advocate of Victim	2 (4.8%)	32 (16.5%)
Juror	1 (2.4%)	6 (3.1%)
Citizen	1 (2.4%)	23 (11.8%)
Newspaper	0 (0.0%)	4 (2.1%)
Total Number of Speakers Questioning Innocence	41	194

Table 6

Attributing Blame for the Wrongful Convictions

	Attribute Blame
Yes	334 (32.2%)
No	702 (67.8%)

Table 7

Who Is Blamed for the Wrongful Conviction? 116

	Blamed
Individual Actor	221 (59.4%)
The State	137 (36.8%)
The Exoneree	1 (3.8%)
Total	372

116 The total number of people blamed is 372. The number of articles in which someone is blamed is 334 because within a single article there may be multiple instances of blame.

Table 8

Who Attributes Blame?

Speakers doing the Blaming
State	51 (13.7%)
Advocate of Victim	4 (1.1%)
Juror	1 (0.3%)
Citizen	37 (9.9%)
Newspaper Reporter	134 (36%)
Exoneree or His/Her Advocate	145 (39%)
Total Number of Speakers Attributing Blame	372

Authors

Metrics

Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2020-0016 | Journal eISSN: 2719-5864 (formerly 2049-4092) | Journal ISSN: 2049-4092

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Language: English

Page range: 209 - 232

Published on: Aug 4, 2020

Published by: Birmingham City University

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

Miscarriages of Justice,

Exonerations,

Death Penalty,

News Coverage

Related subjects:

Law,

History, philosophy and sociology of law,

International law, foreign law, comparative law,

International law, foreign law, comparative law, other,

Public law,

Public law, other

© 2020 Austin Sarat, Natalie Morgan, Willa Grimes, Obed Narcisse, Jeremy Thomas, published by Birmingham City University
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Volume 9 (2020): Issue 2 (August 2020)