Innocents Who Plead Guilty

Innocent defendants often plead guilty to avoid pre-trial detention or to secure a lighter sentence than they potentially could by going to trial. It is much more difficult for defendants who plead guilty to prove their innocence because people are less likely to believe them, but justice is served when innocent defendants are exonerated. The National Registry of Exonerations analyzed data for the first 1,700 exonerees in its database. Fifteen percent of known exonerees at the time had pled guilty. Drug crimes comprised forty percent of all guilty-plea cases, but only nine percent of exonerations. Particularly enlightening was data from Harris County, Texas: defendants pled guilty in each of the seventy-one recorded drug exonerations. Besides drug cases, most guilty-plea exonerations were for homicide or sexual assault. Though the report could not explain why the proportion among adult sexual assault exonerations was particularly low, a majority of homicide exonerees pled guilty to avoid the risk of execution. Almost all manslaughter guilty-plea exonerations began as murder cases that were mitigated. The harsher the penalty for homicide, the fewer the guilty pleas. The better the bargain that the prosecutors offered, the more willing exonerated homicide defendants were to plead guilty.

“It would be comforting to conclude that defendants who plead guilty are far less likely to be innocent than those who are convicted at trial, but it’s not true.”