Since the advent of forensic DNA technology in 1989, more than 3,000 people have been exonerated in the United States after being wrongfully convicted of an array of crimes as simple as drug possession to as serious as capital murder. Texas has the second most exonerations of any state, with more than 400. Some of these miscarriages of justice were detected and remedied quickly, but other innocent men and women languished in prison for decades before the injustices against them were uncovered.
Often,
these false convictions result from the fact that the police and prosecutors
conceal evidence of a defendant’s innocence. And because of an unholy trinity
of legal doctrines, they seldom face repercussions. That should change.
