alt Hacker NewsWhen 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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jasonfarnon • today at 12:06 AM
"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?
peyton • yesterday at 10:49 PM
> 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.
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...