Exoneration

History is full of variations on this idea. The core concept reverberates through centuries and across cultures around the globe: It’s worse to punish innocent people than to let the guilty go free. Today, a majority of Americans may not agree. In a series of recent surveys that polled more than 12,000 people, law professors Brandon Garrett and Gregory Mitchell found that more than 60% of Americans “consider false acquittals and false convictions to be equally bad outcomes,” and a “sizeable minority” viewed wrongful acquittals as worse than wrongful convictions. Mitchell and Garrett also found that in mock trials, those more concerned about wrongful acquittals than wrongful convictions were more than twice as likely to convict after viewing the same evidence.