Accurate Justice Project
The conviction of an innocent person is perhaps the most devastating error our justice system can make. An innocent person punished for something they did not do, all while the true perpetrator avoids accountability and remains in a position to potentially commit more crimes. Yet studies indicate that the number of innocent people currently incarcerated in the United States is in the tens of thousands. To meaningfully address this, it is vital to find ways to identify and correct wrongful convictions more efficiently and at scale.
Improving the use of evidence generated by law enforcement DNA databases, specifically the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”) program, provides an opportunity to do just this. CODIS routinely generates evidence that, in addition to identifying the perpetrator of a violent crime, also reveals the innocence of a person already convicted. Yet currently, this information is not being used to its full potential, with exculpatory hits routinely being ignored or overlooked due to inadequate procedures. This leaves an innocent person to remain in prison, with no way of knowing about the powerful DNA evidence—sitting on the desks of police and prosecutors—that could exonerate them.
This report shines a light on this problem, explaining in detail for the first time how inadequate procedures are allowing crucial DNA database evidence to fall through the cracks all across the country. This report finds that addressing this problem nationwide is likely to generate 20–25 new exonerations annually, all while saving $15–19 million each year in public funds that would otherwise be wasted on incarcerating innocent people.
To this end, we propose that criminal justice agencies across the country adopt long- overdue procedures to govern their handling of CODIS hits (and that state and federal legislatures adopt legislation requiring agencies to do so), specifically guaranteeing that all CODIS hits will be timely reviewed, and that potentially exculpatory hits will be investigated and disclosed to the convicted person and counsel. This is a common sense step towards increasing the accuracy of our justice system, providing freedom to the innocent and justice to victims.