When DNA matching was introduced, we discovered that at minimum 10% of people on death row were innocent. Death row cases are among the most litigated and examined cases. So, 10% is a reasonable floor, and we're already in double digits.

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pseudo0 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That stat is off by a couple orders of magnitude. The total number of death penalty convictions overturned by DNA evidence is 29 (as of 2025). There are a couple thousand death row inmates right now, and the denominator here is all the people who were on death row in the last 20+ years. That's a rate of significantly <1%.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/first-death-row-exoneration-inv...

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golem14 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Shouldn't the denominator be the number of people actually executed ? 691 in the last 20 years, for instance ?

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bouncycastle 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

it doesn't matter if it's 29 or 2900. Even 1 is wrong.

	▲	wyldberry an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The commenter isn't litigating that claim, they are litigating the claim that at least 1 out of 10 of those on death row were false.

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jasonfarnon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"we discovered that at minimum 10% of people on death row were innocent"

How did we do that? I never heard this: certainly 10% of people on death row weren't exonerated by DNA? This is some kind of shaky extrapolation I assume?

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peyton 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> This reasonably sets a floor

I disagree wrt reasonableness. It’s just too big a leap. There are a lot of crimes, and not many land you on death row.

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brookst 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The observation was that death row represents the highest level of scrutiny, and still had 10% false positives for guilt.

Is there any argument that less-scrutinized cases would have a lower level of false convictions?

	▲	bluGill 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The 10% claim has been refuted.

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halestock 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hoo boy, welcome to the history of the United states.