Exonerations in the United States 1989 through 2003

On August 14, 1989, the Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago, Illinois, vacated Gary Dotson's 1979 rape conviction and dismissed the charges. 1 Mr. Dotson-who had spent ten years in and out of prison and on parole for this conviction-was not the first innocent prisoner to be exonerated and released in America.But his case was a breakthrough nonetheless: he was the first who was cleared by DNA identification technology.It was the beginning of a revolution in the American criminal justice system.Until then, exonerations of falsely convicted defendants were seen as aberrational.Since 1989, these once-rare events have become disturbingly commonplace.This is a report on a study of exonerations in the United States from 1989 through 2003.We discuss all exonerations that we have been able to locate that occurred in that fifteen-year period, and that resulted from inves-*