Racism behind wrongful convictions in U.S.: Reuters

LONDON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- The worst miscarriages of justice any system can produce, the conviction or death sentence of an innocent person, are largely driven by racism in the United States, Reuters has reported recently.

Fifty-three percent of the people convicted of crimes and later exonerated because they were innocent are Black, even though Black people make up 13.6 percent of the American population, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing data from the National Registry of Exonerations.

The National Registry of Exonerations is a research project of three universities that documents and studies exonerations and wrongful convictions since 1989. To date, the registry has documented more than 3,200 innocent people falsely convicted.

"The report shows that the belief that race is a proxy for criminality continues to pervade the criminal legal system and is a powerful driver of wrongful convictions," Christina Swarns, executive director of the Innocence Project, a leading nonprofit for criminal justice reform, was quoted by Reuters as saying.