Innocent people are in prison for crimes they did not commit.

The intersection of race and wrongful convictions underscores the systemic biases and inequalities embedded within the criminal justice system. Even without intentional misconduct tainting an identification, a cross-racial eyewitness identification is particularly unreliable. People are more likely to misidentify a person of a different race, and white people are particularly bad at recognizing people who are not white. Mistaken cross-racial identifications play a large role in sexual assault cases where Black men convicted of raping white women are six times more likely to be innocent than white men convicted of raping white women. Pretrial decisions by courts and prosecutors also greatly impact the likelihood of wrongful convictions for Black and brown people. Black and Latinx people accused of crimes are more likely to be detained pretrial, putting their jobs, housing, and families at risk. When prosecutors offer a plea bargain that would allow a person immediate release from pretrial detention, there is a strong incentive for an innocent person to agree to plead guilty and accept responsibility for a crime they didn’t commit. Nearly 25% of those exonerated since 1989 pled guilty, and nearly 75% of this number are Black and brown people.

Plea deals are like contracts; the defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for a more moderate sentence or for certain charges to be dropped. While this seems like a mutually beneficial process for the defendant and the prosecutor, in reality, the system as it currently exists is unconstitutional because defendants are often coerced into pleading guilty and are required to waive key constitutional rights in the process: the right to a jury trial (Seventh Amendment), the right to not self incriminate (Fifth Amendment), and the right to confront and present witnesses (Sixth Amendment). In addition, every day, over 450,000 people await trial in jail because they cannot post bail. As a result of the bail system, defendants who are unable to post bail, and therefore reside in jail for longer, are prone to lose income, housing, and employment, and are prone to plead guilty. Pleading guilty can seem like the most optimal option for these situations. As a result, the current bail system upholds the vicious cycle of incarceration for low-income defendants. Through our legal interventions, we strive to show the prevalence of the cash bail to plea bargain to wrongful conviction pipeline.