[jyounker]

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.

[pseudo0]

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...

[golem14]

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

[bouncycastle]

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

[wyldberry]

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.

[jasonfarnon]

"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?

[themafia]

When they choose the "DNA loci" to do SRT "matching" in the first place they convinced themselves it was a unique fingerprint and there never would be any duplicates in the database.

It only took a few years.

They've since changed and expanded the standard "DNA loci" to compensate.

[peyton]

> 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.

[brookst]

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]

The 10% claim has been refuted.

[brookst]

What % is it?

[jyounker]

Why would you expect those cases to have lower rates of false conviction than normal cases?

[halestock]

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