Wrongful Convictions
June 10, 2025
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Wrongful convictions happen when a person is convicted of a crime they did not commit. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, more than half of all wrongful convictions occur due to lying witnesses or false accounts, and many others occur due to errors of government officials or in eyewitness identifications and forensic findings.
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While this reality isn’t pertinent in all scenarios, wrongful convictions can also occur due to racial bias on the part of the accuser, government officials, or a combination of both—racism impacts wrongful convictions on the individual as well as systemic levels, from the accusation to the sentencing. Wrongful accusations can also be a result of, according to human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, “Race, poverty, inadequate legal assistance, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence” (Equal Justice Initiative).
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It has been estimated that 5% of all convictions are wrongful. Wrongful convictions do not just affect the person—their families and communities become irrevocably changed, whether or not the convicted individual is exonerated, because prisons retain many psychologically, emotionally, and financially damaging structures. Wrongful convictions have occurred throughout history and remain a saddening reality even in our current day.
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There are, unfortunately, several headline-making wrongful convictions in recent years. One famous example is the Central Park Five case, in which five young men of color were wrongfully convicted of attacking and sexually assaulting a white woman in Central Park in 1989. These young men were physically and emotionally abused throughout the process and were eventually all convicted, despite a notable lack of concrete evidence. Some of the young men confessed to the crimes they did not actually commit due to pressure from family and outside forces. As it happens, police and investigation forces were under immense pressure from the public and various news outlets to find someone guilty of the crime.
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It is notable that the judicial system accused and convicted young men of color from underprivileged backgrounds. Systemic racism is integrated and embedded into all levels of society, informing and maintaining problematic societal structures in order to continue buttressing white supremacy and privilege. The Central Park Five case is a prime example of such systemic racism because it demonstrates the intersection between race and class in legal matters and how even a system idealized to be unbiased and objective falls victim to the prevailing structures that inherently lie within.
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The combined factors of systemic racial injustice, false confessions, and societal pressure eventually led to all five young men being convicted for years until another individual confessed to the crimes. While their exonerations are a hopeful reminder that “justice” was eventually reached, it is severely disheartening to think about how that “justice” need not have been dealt in the first place if the legal system were less corrupt. These men lost irreplaceable years of their life, memories, and family connections—replaced by trauma and abuse that will never leave them.
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Bias is inherently a human reality. The first step to alleviate its grip is to recognize that it governs our day-to-day lives. One problem, it seems, that haunts the “justice” system is that such bias is not adequately recognized. Problematic structures that have, time and time again, proven to be systemically unjust continue to operate our society.
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