Presumption of Guilt

Han-Xi spent 30 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit – rape, murder, sodomy and burglary. That's four more years than his age at the time he was convicted. He died at the ripe old age of 59, that's what a life sentence gets you, I suppose. Then again, China has a 99.9% conviction rate, in 2014, out of 1.2 million people tried, only 1,039 were acquitted.

You might as well buy a lottery ticket.

Of course, this is China we're talking about, this wouldn't happen in MY country. While – sure – the red star state isn't the poster child of human rights, it would be unfair if I didn't fess up. The statistics are true, however, Han-Xi isn't real.

His actual name is George Allen Jr, and he's American as apple-pie. His story isn't all gloom and doom, he was exonerated at the age of 56. Sure, he might as well been born in prison, he spent almost as much time outside as he did behind bars. At least he didn't get a death sentence.

George Allen Jr. is just one of the 2,551 cases compiled in the National Registry of Exonerations. That's twenty-two thousand five-hundred and forty years spent in jail, vanished, struck from the record by the strike of a gavel. It's not a perfect list, far from it, data prior to 1989 is scarce – and frankly, it wouldn't be too crazy to call it under representative of a considerably larger problem. Even so, it points us in the right direction.

Just how just is justice?

The United States' conviction rate is a hard thing to measure, much like anything in this god forsaken country, it varies state by state, court by court. It was 99.8% in 2015, for the Federal Court at least – a little bit shy of excellent, but still an A+. While it's true that these are federal crimes we're talking about, it would be outrageous to claim it's solely due to prosecutors being so darn good at their jobs. As most things in life, it's a nuanced and complicated issue.

For one, and this might come as a surprise to some, most cases don't get tried by a jury – this ain't "Suits." It's expensive, time consuming, and it really pisses of prosecutors if you choose that route – they'll seek the harshest, longest sentence possible. If you were in George Allen Jr.'s shoes, you would've probably taken a plea deal and called it a day. Which is why in 2015 only 1.6% of federal cases had a jury trial. Which makes it even more ballsy that George stuck to his innocence, however, if he knew how bad his odds were, who knows what he would've done – probably murder someone for real this time.

And its only getting worse. The conviction rate has been steadily rising since 1973 (on the contrary to crime, which has been on a downturn since the 90s), while the number of acquittals has drastically fallen. In 2015, for every 493 convictions, there was one acquittal, the 1973 ratio was 17:1. It's all across the board too, in 2015 more than half of the 94 federal judicial districts had zero to one acquittals, many of them with 1000:0 scoreboards. The U.S federal court outplays casinos.

It's not a fair game. These are Sisyphean odds.

This is disregarding some of the more poignant issues one must mention when talking about justice in America. The prison industrial complex, disparities in convictions according to race, gender and wealth, minimum sentences...you name it. Yet, there's something even more harrowing in knowing your life is forfeited for something you didn't even do. When your only alternative is to play dice with the devil, what else can you do but sign on the dotted line...GUILTY?

George Allen Jr. was lucky enough to at least savour freedom, but what of all the others who were sent to the chair? Those that we know of, at least. As per the registry, 15 people were executed wrongfully. This list isn't even an official government record, it's the largest and most detailed compilation of exoneration data ever made, yet the project was created by the Michigan State University College of Law.

So, what's the actual number? Do you even want to know? The U.S government sure as hell doesn't seem to care, otherwise they'd run the numbers themselves.

Perhaps that's the most egregious part of it all, once convicted, always forgotten. There is no incentive, moral, monetary, or otherwise, to review or admit to miscarriages of justice. There are appeals, habeas corpus, pardons, but they don't amount to much. Between 2011 and 2015, only 19 state prisoners were exonerated with the assistance of federal courts. Compare that to the Innocence Project, which since its inception in 1992, has won 232 cases for exoneration. We're talking millions of dollars in settlements and payouts, yet no amount of dollars can un-kill a person. There's no dollar amount that will make spending 30 years between barbed wire and concrete worth it.

Its not a hard number to number to quantify. The registry ran a study that concluded that there was a 4% error rate in death-sentence cases. There are about 2.3 million people in prisons in America, that's roughly Slovenia's population. If you extrapolate this 4%, which might even be on the low side considering death-sentence cases have the highest burden of proof, that totals to 92,000 people wrongfully incarcerated.

They'll probably rot in prison, and if not, they'll probably wish they had. There's not much life to be lived with a felony charge on your permanent record.

Man-made punishment is God-sent when you mistake the innocent as guilty.