Justice system officials who say the news media overdo coverage of wongful convictions are misguided, says journalist Steve Weinberg in a new blog on True/Slant.com, In Justice. It’s true that a few of the nation’s 2,300 district attorney jurisdictions have few or no wrongful convictions. Overall, however, “the U.S. criminal justice system, when looked at overall, produces way too many wrongful convictions-at least a couple dozen every year, on average, and maybe far more,” Weinberg says.
DNA testing has proved that ar0und 300 convicted men and women didn't do the crime. Other investigative efforts, devoid of DNA material, have proved wrongful convictions in at least 100 more cases since the 1980s. Even if the overall percentage of cases that end in wrongful convictions is small, Weinberg says, “Even one wrongful conviction in a jurisdiction is too many-just like one airplane crash per a million takeoffs/landings is too many, just like one fatal case of food poisoning at a restaurant is too many.”