In 2024, 147 people were exonerated in the U.S. after losing an average of 13.5 years of their lives to wrongful imprisonment for crimes they did not commit.
Race continues to play a major role in this injustice — 78% of the exonerees were people of color and 60% of all exonerees those were Black.
In total, the exonerated people lost 1,980 years of life to prison and the states that made the errors are liable for more than $4.6 billion in damages.
These are among the main findings of the 2024 Annual Report of The National Registry of Exonerations, released on April 1, 2025. This comes as National Crime Victims’ Rights Week occurs the second week of April.
The registry is edited by Barbara O’Brien, professor of law at Michigan State University College of Law.
Factors leading to the exonerations are as follows:
- Official misconduct: 71%
- Mistaken witness identification: 26%
- False confessions: 15%
- Perjury or false accusations: 72%
- False or misleading forensic evidence: 29%
- Inadequate legal defense: 33%
Texas had the most exonerations, with 26. Of those, 17 were tied to the misconduct of a former narcotics officer in the Houston Police Department. Illinois ranks second with 20; Pennsylvania and New York had 15 exonerations each.
The cases of several people who were exonerated in 2024 are described in some detail in the report.
“They are remarkable accounts of these individuals’ persistence and determination in the face of injustice,” the report states.
The National Registry of Exonerations records all know exonerations in the U.S. The registry captures statistics and analyzes trends, which are used by social justice advocates, legislative policymakers, legal scholars and researchers, and the media.
“Our work is part of the fabric of this area of the law,” said O’Brien. “It’s an important and necessary documentation of grave injustices made by those who are entrusted to protect us.”
Rebecca Brown, former policy director of the Innocence Project and co-founder of Justice Strikeforce, credits the registry’s data with shaping and supporting legislative and policy recommendations aimed at making the criminal justice system more just.
“The rich and thoughtful information and data presented by the registry is a dream come true for any advocate,” Brown said. “Just yesterday I pulled a relevant statistic on exonerations involving withheld evidence to defend New York’s criminal discovery law.”
